Heart of Glass
by Not Human
Summary: Some girls are made of glass, but some glass can be impossible to see through. This is the story of Angie Hearts Crane...a look back at an impossible girlhood crush and her eventual disillusion. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_Dear Diary_

_Her heart fluttered, shuffled. Two steps ahead, as always, the man of her most recent dreams walked. Angel kept time with him, kept her black boots clicking on the linoleum, kept her highschool uniform bobbing pressed and perfect down the corridor. Together in secrecy they walked down the stark halls, passing by narrow windows set in heavy ugly doors. The white of his coat shone for her, a beacon in the dark mob of people. A doctor in a hospital; Dr. Cameron. _

_I think I love him_

(snap)

It was a dream and a memory. Angie came back to herself in a private room inside Arkham Asylum, her young blond friend cowering beside her. The outside noise carried on; the lunatics had taken over in the night, and the chaos had yet to subside. Yet somehow, Angie had found sleep.

She glanced over to Jane; the girl shivered and clung to her like a life-raft, but she did seem to be sleeping. Poor little Jane. Jonnie sure had taken a shine to her; there'd been a time when Angie would have killed – well, figuratively – to be in that place, but seeing what it would have gotten her…she had changed her mind. Her love interests were often ill-conceived, and were in fact most of the reason she was in this 'hospital' to begin with, but even she had to admit she'd taken a near-fatal turn with Dr. Crane. Of course, he'd been alright at first…back when she'd really been messed up. She sighed, and tightened her arm around Jane's shoulders. Jane was a teenager, at least two years younger than Angie's twenty years, but she'd swear she was decades more mature. She'd known Crane for what he was right away; something it took Angie years to see.

It was love that had blinded her, and it was love that had brought her to the doctors' attention; not only Dr. Crane, but another doctor, a first doctor, a first love. Dr. Daniel Cameron; tall, dark and undeniably handsome. She tiredly remembered the affair, the unbelievable account of a seventeen-year old candy striper sleeping with a thirty-something oncologist. No one had understood, least of all her mother; she'd been ordered to move out of the house, and that doctor, once so smooth and sympathetic, had swiftly disappeared. It was nightmare Angie had witnessed echoes of here, in the Looney Bin.

Love was so unkind.

The details of that months-long fiasco could luckily be saved for a day more accommodating to melancholy; her thoughts naturally turned to the girl at her side. A frightening thing was happening to them, she could feel it. Angie had found her in Corridor F, huddled and chattering madly on the floor. She'd heard whispers as she'd approached…more than just Jane's, she'd been sure. When she'd come to her, there had been no one else present. The corridor bent at an odd angle, of course, so someone could have easily disappeared there, but they were underground. Where would a fellow escapee go from the basement?

A thump from the hallway outside Jane's room jolted Angie into the present again; the inmates had not calmed at all, after what seemed like an eternity. She would have thought there'd be more…well, escaping. From the sounds of it, the other criminal-types were more interested in robbing and pillaging rooms than in making a speedy exit. The thought froze her insides; the idea of what a crazy thug would do if he found them there, cowering alone like little girls. Some ends are hard to shake; the theme seemed to be a recurring one for both herself and Jane. It scared her, the way events grouped together; the way _fate_ became _Fate_.

_Fate led me here, led me to you_

"Dear Diary," she murmured, in her exhaustion.

_Dear Diary, today I met my psychiatrist. I think I love him. _

_His name is Jon. Jonathan Crane. _

_I think…._

"I love him,' an eighteen-year old psychiatric patient said to her reflection. The amber-eyed brunette in the mirror could do nothing but agree.

This is the story of Angie Hearts Crane; the reasons she'd loved him, and the reasons he'd let her go without a fight.

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A/N :

So here it is, the first chapter of Angie's story. I think this one will be a little slower in coming than the last, as it's coming from a much different mind. Angie is a girl who loves to the max, too easily. She trusts immediately, and it's a part of her personality that somehow endears her to Dr. Crane. Expect a very different doctor at first; she will have a crush, remember, so we'll be seeing him through those rosy glasses. It's presented an a flashback-style format, and if I need to make the transitions clearer, let me know. I'll put up a few chapters this way, if no one comments on that, to let you get a feel for the way Angie thinks. In my eyes, Angie is flawed in some very apparent ways, especially in her dealings with Crane, but in the present-time parts of the story, she has come to realize her mistakes. Have patience, if her Mary Sue-like attraction annoys at first; I've tried to avoid making her into that, but if she seems that way now, she will come to her senses, believe me. I hope you enjoy it! I couldn't have come this far without the support of great writers and readers like you all.

- nH

p.s. - Bear Bum, my email is now displayed on my profile. Anyone else who wishes to contact me, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 

_First Sight_

As fitful sleep again wrapped Angie in a thin, cold embrace, her first meeting with Crane surfaced and replaced the present.

She had waited; ten minutes had passed as she casually inspected her smooth, sharp nails. Her latest manicure remained quite adequate. She sat at a bare metal table in a bright white room, with an uncommunicative orderly standing guard at her door. The doctor was coming, she'd been promised. It was Angie's first day in Arkham, after her admission the night before.

Finally, the heavy door opened, and a slight, pretty man stepped inside. Angie's plan had been to remain blasé, but she froze in that familiar way when she laid her eyes upon him. He was young, with eyes of a startling blue. He looked as light as air, with bones as hollow as a bird. Immediately, she was bonded to him.

"Hello," he said, sitting across from her with a grace rarely seen in a man. "May I call you Angie?"

"That's what I prefer," she answered, enthralled.

"Alright, then. I'm Dr. Crane. I'm here to help you. We'll work together, yes?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said. How could she ever disagree with this man?

In her reverie, she was stunned by his next question.

"Why are you here?" he asked. No pretension; he was jumping right in, it would seem.

"Um," she started. "I was put here…?" It was a question.

The doctor smiled. "Yes," he allowed. "But why?"

"I…okay. I tried to keep a guy for too long."

"How long is too long?"

"Only about three days, surprisingly."

If she hadn't known better, she may have thought he found that funny; Crane looked as if he was trying to suppress a smile.

"I'll be straight with you," he said, "and you can be straight with me, Angie. I'm not terribly concerned with what you did to grab the attention of the people around you _this time._ Something lead you to this, something taught you how to behave. Tell me, if you know; what made you think that _keeping a guy_ was exactly what you needed to do?"

Now she was at a loss, in shock. Such a serious question for such a pretty little guy; furthermore, she didn't know the answer.

"I…I don't know," she admitted. She wondered why she'd never asked that of herself.

He smiled again; a pleasant effect, calming. "Well, then. We know where to begin."

(snap)

Back in Jane's cold, darkened room, Angie's sleep again deserted her. Awakening, she remembered that session, years ago. Lifetimes, it seemed. Crane's smile had been light, human. So very long ago.

_My how things have changed _

Back when he'd been a doctor, and not an experimentalist in pain. No, not pain; nothing so clear-cut. He dabbled now in something more ambiguous, something that dug deeper and left no scars; hurt. It was his forte, his area. Apparently, it had also become his undoing.

"Scarecrow," Jane murmured.

Angie started; Jane had been sleeping in a state of unrest since they'd returned from Corridor F. Now she was awake, relatively; staring upward with darkened gray eyes, searching the ceiling for spirits and…scarecrows?

Something nagged at Angie; _Scarecrow. _This was not the first time she'd heard it. When had that first time been?

"Scarecrow," Angie breathed. Jane's wandering gaze finally settled on her.

"Yes,", Jane said. The most lucid statement she'd made since their return there. "Scarecrow."

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A/N:

So is it going okay? The present-past relationship is clear? It's quite different being inside Angie's head, as she's not so frightened of Crane. Her mind holds secrets, though, some that even she doesn't know. Stay tuned.

- nH


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

_Love Bites_

The hours crawled by like years as Angie held onto Jane in the dark, ransacked room. Jane had awakened briefly, then disappeared again into the fog she'd been lost in since Dr. Crane had last treated her. What had he done to her? Angie thought back to the others whose minds she'd seen vanish with time spent in the lower levels of the Asylum; she wondered why it had not seemed plausible until a few months ago that Crane would be harming his patients. Had she been so blinded by love that she'd not seen a monster in their midst?

Oh, love; what a devil. It had bitten her more than once, and it always left her bloodied and bruised. She felt it, yes she did; she felt it more keenly than she believed anyone else ever could. It always caught her by surprise, always got past her locked gates after she swore _never again,_ time after time. Daniel Cameron had been the first; it had taken Crane months to get to that story, hidden so carefully away from daylight. People knew the mechanics of it, the fact that she'd been an easily impressed teenager taken by a prestigious doctor, behind closed doors and far from his wife. No one knew the depth of her feelings for him, the power of the hurt he'd left her with. It had been assumed that she'd had a good time, and had separated easily. Fortunately, Daniel had for some reason not told anyone of her pursuit of him after it ended. It was their last little secret; maybe he'd been saving her for a rainy day.

_Don't get your hopes up, girl._ She'd said thatto herself every day for three years.

On to more immediate problems...the silence hit her suddenly; all at once, it occurred to Angie that she hadn't heard anything from the hallway for quite a while. This night seemed endless, although the actual passage of time would be hard to judge in the absence of sky. Cautiously, she rose, leaving Jane curled up in their corner. She made her way to the door, safely barricaded behind the heavy metal-framed bed; that had not been easy to move, she remembered clearly. No one would be getting into their room in a hurry. She'd made sure of it as Jane had collapsed shivering onto the floor, unknown hours ago.

Climbing onto the mattress, she placed her ear to the steel door, listening intently. It was difficult to hear anything other than the roar of her own hot blood, pumped out by a tense frightened heart. There had been noises before, true; people rushing past, joyfully throwing things, breaking glass and bones. Now there was nothing, emptiness. _If_ there was no one waiting there in the dark, of course. Holdouts for the last victims, the final patients of Arkham? The calm, collected madmen and women left behind by the common thieves and killers, the special, the ones truly to be feared. If they existed outside of her nightmares, then surely they were out there, waiting for new prey to present itself.

She turned back to Jane. She looked better, slightly. Still in that state of near-sleep, eyes closed tightly and breath still ragged, but less so than before. Angie had to make a decision; they couldn't stay there all night, could they? This was Crane's hospital, and he would be back for what he'd left behind, if indeed he'd left at all. Jane had been marked by him, she was his now. Angie didn't want to see what plans he'd left undone in that girl.

Turning back to the door, Angie braced herself; she inched up to the tiny window, reinforced by thick metal bars. It was predictably dark out there, but the distant red of an exit sign illuminated some vaguely recognizable shapes. A gurney overturned, wheels unmoving; the door opposite theirs left open, the room beyond it a black gaping hole. She waited, scarcely breathing, for something or someone to move. She stayed in that stillness for as long as she thought she could bear, then she waited longer, forcing her taught nerves to hold out for their safety. Nothing stirred, no sound reached her. She hoped it was a sign she could trust.

She stepped down from the bed and returned to Jane. Hesitantly, she reached out and gently shook the girl's shoulder. She awoke instantly, gray eyes wide and darting.

"Jane?" Angie said softly.

Her gaze stopped it's frantic search, finally resting on Angie. "Angel," she said. It warmed her heart to hear it.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "That's me. I need you to get up, because we have to leave here."

"Leave…the hospital?" Jane asked with surprising clarity. It occurred to Angie that this was a repeat of an exchange made hours ago, roles reversed. When Jane had first returned changed, and the rioting had begun, and Jane had wanted to leave the damnable place while Angie had bade (or bidden?) her to stay. That had ended with Jane irreversibly altered; perhaps now was the time to listen to her previous instinct, finally.

"Yes," Angie said. "Will you come with me?"

Jane's furrowed brow cleared, like the sun breaking through a heavy cloud. "Yes," she said. "Leave…yes."

Angie nodded, only mildly relieved.

The hard part lay ahead of them; Arkham had not been built to be escaped from. It was a fortress, a huge coffin of brick and mortar housing atrocities and violations. Even with every door between them and the outside standing wide open, Angie feared the ghostly remains of all that had transpired over the years would rise up and stop them. Arkham had a way of protecting the guilty.

_A/N:_

_Hello, folks. Thanks for reading! And I've got some news; I'm afraid many of your questions will not be answered immediately. Who is Daniel Cameron, for instance, or exactly what happened there. Angie's got a few menial tasks to deal with, you see, before she can settle down and explore her dubious memory. Stay tuned though, I definitely plan to explain everything as best I can! Oh, and to spinningincircles: I can tell you that her last name isn't Crane, actually. But thanks for the interest! Stay tuned, I am writing more. Comments and all that stuff welcome. And if anyone knows the 'bade/bidden' distinction, feel free to tell me. It's driving me nuts._

_Luv, _

_nH_


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

_The Long Dark_

It took both girls to move the bed this time; Angie's weariness was catching up to her, it would seem. Jane proved cooperative, for a drugged crazy person. Angie worried still; Jane hadn't said a word since she'd agreed to leave with her, and her gaze seemed constantly lost in some other time or place. She did as Angie suggested, silently, and without eye contact. It was as if she'd been shelled, hollowed out; an effect unsettlingly familiar.

Setting her apprehension aside for the moment, Angie guided Jane to stand behind her as she heaved the door open. It moved with a noise altogether too loud for Angie's liking, but she gritted her teeth and continued until there was a space big enough for them to squeeze through. Before she lead Jane outside, she poked her head out, testing the water. The silence remained unbroken, and nothing within her limited visual range moved. The red neon sign, somewhere out of sight, shed a creepy light over the area; Angie could swear she heard the dripping of the pipes in the walls. This place seemed empty, that was for sure. Arkham was as quiet as a tomb.

She reached behind her and took Jane's hand. "Time to go," she whispered. Jane moved, shuffled obediently. The entire scene was giving Angie chills.

Leading Jane down the hallway proved trickier than Angie'd at first thought. There was so much debris to avoid, so much broken glass, so many slippery black smudges to edge around. It was obvious that the little pools weren't black in clear light, and that they were of a substance not meant to be stepped in; Angie pushed the reality from her mind and pressed onward, submissive Jane in tow.

"We're looking for stairs," Angie whispered to no one in particular. Jane probably wasn't listening, but it was somewhat comforting to hear her own voice enter the quiet. "Where are the stairs…?"

Fate answered her question with eerily good timing. At the end of the hallway they trekked through, a door stood open; a decrepit red sign hung by a wire from a smashed hole in the plaster above it. The light shining through the cracked plastic didn't say much to Angie, but she was sure she'd never seen a door marked 'exit' anywhere in that level of the mental hospital before. _Stairwell, _Angie remembered, not _Exit._ This place was a last stop; there was no exit, there was not supposed to be any escape. This was another thought hastily buried; such things could be considered later, in the safety of the outside.

"In the Narrows?" she asked herself, ironically. Safety in the Narrows? Only a crazy person could come up with a theory like that.

_But seriously, hon, where to after this? You gonna just stop by your mom's place, say hi after she left you here for three years? _

"I don't know," she said, annoyed. "I don't know exactly where we're going, but we're going, okay?"

"Okay," Jane answered, making Angie jump.

_Oh, gosh, honey! I wasn't talking to you!_

Sometimes the clarity of Angie's internal monologue made her worry; it became less an audible thought and more a conversation between a nutcase and her other personality. She considered telling herself to shut up, but thought better of it.

"Alright, up the stairs," she said instead. Jane stiffened.

"Dark, I know. But we'll be together, Jane, okay?"

This time there was no answer.

_This is just like a dream I had once_

_Moving secretly through a dark house_

_Remember, Angie? _

In fact, she didn't remember. Heart beating a million miles a minute, she crept with Jane into the shadows of the long ascending dark. It did hold a strange familiarity, yes. Something about the stakes of escape being too high to think about in the heat of these endless moments; nothing more than that. Probably one of those horror survival games, zombies shambling around every corner. _Things could be worse_, she reminded herself. _At least there are no undead psychopaths out to eat your brains_. _Although if there were, you'd have a shotgun. _

This dark was harder to adjust to than the red-tinted glaze in the previous hallway. Everything, every wall and step and scattered object underfoot, everything blended into the black; Angie nearly tripped more than once in the first few minutes, her sneaker-clad feet colliding with unknowns both hard and unsettlingly soft. Jane followed closely behind, managing to remain upright with the scant warning Angie's near falls provided. Finally, guided by the touch of the cold steel railing, Angie rounded the first corner and saw a sliver of blue light falling from an unseen higher level. It was enough to make the stairwell adequately visible; she resisted the compulsion to look behind her at all the things she'd stumbled over, bathed in new light. It was a revelation she could do without; _that's another familiar feeling, isn't it, Angie? _

She ignored herself, not for the first time. She and Jane pulled themselves through the stairwell, as if they were dragging themselves up from the grave.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

_Fate _

Finally, finally, freedom loomed; well, closer in relativity. They were on the main level, after what felt like years squirming like insects in the dark. Silence reigned here too; the only noise came from outside, the true outside, the real world. Angie hadn't been out there in three years; they had stretched behind her in an eternity, yesterday. Now they seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. She was as distant from that world now as she'd been on the day she was admitted.

For safety, she and Jane waited a few minutes on the dark side of the stairwell's door; the locking mechanism had been smashed by some other patient, presumably one of Crane's more violent subjects. A broken slat from what must have been some cafeteria table in the Max ward lay in the corner, where it was thrown after it had served its purpose. _That must have taken some doing. Made of metal, isn't it? What behemoth managed to break that off?_

Shoving her fear deeper inside, Angie now walked quietly with Jane toward the nurses' station at the front entrance. It had been a while since she'd seen the place; much of the recent past had been spent underground, with the occasional visit outside to see the sky. Every half-hour in the yard had felt like the last; shaking off that feeling of death, Angie mused that this station felt like a part of the distant past, or like something she'd seen in some movie. Nothing of Arkham seemed real anymore.

Approaching the secure exit, Angie thanked whatever deity was looking after them that night for allowing the hundreds of others in Arkham to hurl themselves through the doors, blowing them wide open and leaving them the same way. Their progress out of the hospital seemed unhindered; outside, Angie could feel a chill breeze creep along the damp ground. Autumn leaves tumbled along, and no other people appeared to be near. Shouts could be heard, from indiscernible places in the distance, and sirens wailed despairingly, of course; Arkham had been emptied, and not even the Narrows could let something like that slide. Angie realized that the police must have assumed that the patients had all cleared out earlier, and were now out in full force to round them up from the streets. They'd have their hands full; good news, if they were for the moment concerned with burly psychopaths and not frightened young girls. They'd have the chance to get out, out of the Narrows, out of this life for good.

Arkham hadn't been bad for most of Angie's time there; she'd had Jonnie Crane to play with, and he'd made the days pass a bit faster. Of course, nothing lasts forever, and soon Jonnie's interests had dimmed, and Angie had taken his sudden coldness predictably hard, and her subsequent behaviour had landed her somewhere below Max…water under the bridge, really. All that mattered was putting this behind her, from the riot that had freed her all the way back to her reason for being there in the first place. Jane would come with her, certainly. Something could be done about the girl, someday soon she'd have so snap out of this…fugue. Until then, she'd be in Angie's care.

_I'm more interested in the man who brought you here_

_Whoever broke you, and taught you how to behave, and how to treat yourself_

Crane's voice shot through her with such sudden clarity that Angie had to stop and snap her eyes shut, willing the noise away. Sometimes it happened like this, a memory bludgeoned its way inside and set fire to all the little thoughts in her head. This time it was a voice; others it was a touch, a taste, a smell. Sometimes the past lived around her, and remained unconcerned with the sanity she was trying to upkeep. Living in Arkham had been a rest from it, for a little while; people in there expected you to react to your own memory like that. If it wasn't so disruptive to Angie's behaviour, it wouldn't have been one of those things she and Crane had tried to work through. But it was, and so it had been. She'd thought it was over; the stress of escape must have thrown her back into some bad habits.

Jane hovered obediently, still not quite looking at her. Angie somehow felt she owed the girl some explanation, though she was sure Jane had seen stranger things during her time inside. She opened her mouth to explain something about therapy; Jane unexpectedly cut her off.

"He follows," she said.

Stunned, Angie's lips parted silently. "Who?" she managed finally.

Jane's eyes cut distractedly to the side, and stayed there. She gave no answer.

Angie looked around them, her movements shaky and not at all calm, desperate but wishing to appear strong. She saw nothing, no movement. If someone was following, they were also doing a fine job of hiding.

She didn't say anything to Jane; no need to discuss it in the lion's den like this. Outside…they were already outside; they had to get away from Arkham, or it would suck them back under like a sinking ship. Casting her gaze hastily around her, Angie spied a lone public telephone standing on a corner some distance away.

"Come on," she said, taking Jane's hand and marching across the street. Eyes on her target, she pressed on; nothing else could be allowed in, or else she might be frightened off her path. No shadows, no spirits could stay them from their course; Jane was counting on her, somewhere deep inside.

The breath of the season was cold, and it cut through their light sanitarium-issued jogging clothes like a razor. There was a half-demolished phonebook dangling under the decrepit machine; Angie flipped through the pages, looking for her own name in the mangled and stained sheaves. She was dismayed to find her entire letter missing; fate had a way of messing with the easy route.

_Who's next, who will have anything to do with a couple of head-cases from the Narrows?_

At a loss, Angie stood, head down, for a number of minutes. Something, some scrap of a memory danced at the edge of her mind; there was someone who'd lived near the Narrows at the time she'd gone under the surface of Arkham. _Who was that?_

Snap; it happened, a tiny bit of the past surfaced. _Of course. How could I have forgotten…_

She snatched up the hanging book and scanned the first visible page; fate had again spoken. Visible through a window of torn paper and coffee stains was the first letter available to them that night. Once there, in the Cs, the only name she had left sprang up to meet her gaze.

_Cameron, D_

_On the edge of the Narrows_

_Appropriate, don't you think, Angie?_

"Yes," she murmured as she grabbed the phone. Silence; the eerie stillness one gets when one picks up a dead toy. She looked to Jane; still not meeting her eyes directly, she seemed a bit tense. More so than she had been, in fact. Angie remembered what she'd said; _he follows._ It was a tense thought, indeed.

_Arkham is his haunt, y'know_

"We can walk there, if we're careful," Angie said. "It's the only way we've got, in fact."

Jane appeared to agree, if Angie was any judge of what her shivers and twitching glances meant. She tore the address out of the sadly diminished book; clutching it in one hand while the other firmly held Jane's, Angie lead her out, into the streets, moving in the direction she vaguely remembered from not-so-long ago.

Daniel Cameron would be receiving more than one guest tonight.

_That, my dear, is Fate. _


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

_**The Edge of the Narrows**_

_4815 Kane Crescent _

_right on the cusp, isn't it_

Indeed it was, perched on the edge of the Narrows Island, in a strangely historical suburb; Angie had no way to judge the passage of time, but it felt like they'd been walking for at least an hour. The way had become clearer to Angie the further they'd gone; she had been there before, from the main bridge into the Narrows all the way to the desolate century houses on Kane Crescent, overlooking the wide river. Naturally, no other people were evident in the neighborhood, but the sirens continued and the bridge, a few miles downriver, remained raised.

"Here we are," Angie reported hollowly. The streetlights were largely out, cloaking the area in a dirty darkness. She vaguely remembered having been to Daniel's house now; of course, she'd had an affair with him, so she must have been here, mustn't she?

_No, darling, as I recall, it was mainly motels and spare hospital rooms_

Thinking on it now, that was true, although the darkened and oddly ominous house before her did hold a strange familiarity. Jane stood alongside her, staring straight into the shrouded windows of the first floor. A direct look was something Angie hadn't seen from Jane since her return from Crane's care a day before; Angie watched her for a moment, half expecting some ill-boding cryptic statement from the girl. None came; Jane was as silent as she'd been for the majority of the night.

Did she want a warning? Where had this unexpected sense of fear come from – Angie hung back even now, surprised at herself for her hesitance. In general, Angie did not hesitate; lack of confidence was not in her nature. During the walk over she'd had no misgivings, no internal warnings; of course, she hadn't given herself much of a chance to think of anything. She'd moved forward, blindly following the memory of a path she didn't clearly remember ever taking. The only conscious thoughts she'd experienced on that long walk were of Crane, and therapy.

_Remember therapy, Angie? _

_Remember the way he treated you, the way he broke you_

In the present, Angie realized she was no longer thinking of Crane when terms like **_the way he broke you_** came up; who was she thinking of, then? She didn't know that either; it was Crane's voice asking about being broken, no one else's. He had questioned her about it, not perpetrated it.

_Angie, this man was wrong to use you that way. To forgive him is key, but first you must understand, really understand, that you played no part in his decision; he was not thinking of you at all. To realize that, you must forgive yourself, even though you haven't done anything wrong._

There again, inside her head, Crane advised her. Angie squeezed her eyes shut, to close out the pain he was causing. He must be talking about Daniel, then; the way he'd left her, to her mother who would only throw her out, and to her dubious highschool friends who'd only gossip about them and leave her in the same way. He could have done more for her, yes, but he would have had to have been a hero. He had a wife to think of, a future as a husband and a doctor. No normal man would throw that away over a fling with a stupid seventeen year old. Not even if he knew he had broken her heart.

Daniel had done what she'd expected of him; it had shattered her to find that she was right in her assumption that she loved him more, but she couldn't exactly blame him. Jonnie had mended her, Jonnie had picked up her pieces and put them back together. Daniel was a sad chapter in her life, but she needed him now to hide her from the man who had fixed her broken mess.

_We gonna stand here forever, doll? _

"No," she murmured, but she still could not will her feet into action. Stand they would, then. Sighing, she took Jane's hand as she turned, sitting them both down at the curb. "I don't know what we're going to do," she said to herself and Jane.

_Think on it awhile_

_Remember what Jonnie said_

"What did he say?" she whispered, eyes closing in her fatigue.

"Angie," Dr. Crane said. "I want you to tell me about Dr. Cameron."

She looked up furtively from the table; she didn't recall having mentioned the man to him before. "How do you know about him?"

"I don't. That's why I'm asking."

The sunlight, streaming in through the barred windows, seemed almost too bright to be true. Slitting her eyes against the light, Angie shrugged. "I used to volunteer at Gotham Cancer Centre. He's a doctor there. I…knew him."

Crane nodded. "How did you know him? In more than a professional capacity?"

She snickered; it was a gut reaction. "Yeah," she said. "It was more than professional."

"How unprofessional was he?"

"Pretty darn…"

Angie allowed him to draw the conclusion, because she had grown sick of telling people about the hurt and misplaced anger the man had caused while her words fell on deaf ears.

Dr. Crane, ever drawing these conclusions like the good doctor he was, leaned toward her over the table. He reached across; it was a smaller setup this time, to allow for a slightly closer contact between doctor and patient. He placed his hand near to hers, but didn't touch.

"I think he's the key," he said softly. "I believe Dr. Cameron is the reason you think of yourself the way you do, and why you believed you had to imprison that boy James. I can help you, but first I have to know exactly what happened."

_What happened there Angie_

_Do you even know?_

"He left me," Angie, twenty years old, whispered on the damp cement in the middle of the longest night ever lived in Gotham City. "He just left me…didn't he?"

"Excuse me?" a voice said, a man from a confused memory. "Are…are you girls alright?"

Angie turned, still frowning from the pain of almost remembering. Strange, how events so clearly defined yesterday faded into uncertainty in the darkness of an asylum riot. She stood; light from a fractured lamppost shone from somewhere down the street, casting the man in a similarly fractured shadow. Still, she knew him. The feeling of coldness and steel in her guts was as unexpected as it was sickening.

He was standing on his front walk, tentatively, braced in a position ready to run. His face changed when he saw hers; lightening struck, and thunder rolled somewhere in their shared past.

"Angel?" he said.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

_**Shelter**_

This certainly wasn't the re-acquaintance she'd had in mind all those years. Her stomach twisted itself into knots at the sight of him; Daniel Cameron, oncologist, standing in his front yard with a cautious demeanor, watching two young women shiver in the night cold. This feeling was strange, considering; shouldn't it be more melodramatic and soppy, less nauseous and frightening?

"Yes," she answered him, at a loss for greater words. "It's me."

"What are you doing here?" His voice had a dark quality, hidden in the question, shimmering in secrecy. This probably meant that his wife had not left him; lucky for him. Nevertheless, she'd not be thrilled to find the girl her husband had probably slept with years ago hanging out on their property.

"I – _we ­– _had nowhere else to go," Angie said, suddenly remembering Jane's presence beside her. "It's all crazy out here." She glanced out toward the main bridge, raised and silent in the dark distance like an apocalyptic watchtower. "The Narrows is cut off, you can hear the riot in the distance. We need help, just for a while, maybe until tomorrow."

Daniel's posture had relaxed somewhat; clearly, he could take Angie in a fight, and Jane's lack of eye contact made her seem rather unthreatening as well. "Where were you? I mean, why were you here?" he asked. "I thought you lived off the Narrows."

"I…did," Angie said after some thought. "I've been here for a few years." She smiled briefly. "Sorry I didn't look you up."

He laughed humorlessly. "I wouldn't expect you to," he answered. He took a small step forward; Jane's stance tensed, Angie noticed, but Daniel didn't appear to be looking in that direction. His voice was low, almost angry. "What is this, some kind of punishment? I thought I'd never be seeing you again."

She felt a definite pang at this; she could sure use Jonnie's kinder words now. "There was a riot," she said again. "There is nowhere else for us to go. I don't know what else to do. We were close once, I loved you, we were great…" she stopped before she made a complete fool of herself. He was certainly stunned by her candor. "I know you had to leave me. It's okay. But we need shelter tonight, please."

He stood, frozen, at this for what seemed like minutes. "I had to leave you…" he said slowly, sadly. "You're not angry? You haven't spent all this time hating me, blaming me?"

"No," she shook her head. "I've had help, I know you had no other choice, really." Her glance flickered to the heavy oak door behind him. "Does your wife know?"

Daniel reflexively followed her gaze for a second, the turned back to her. "No," he said. "I've never felt the need to tell her."

"Is she in there?"

"No," he answered, appearing to know the question was loaded. "She's downtown, safely. Visiting her mother – did you ever meet her? My wife, I mean."

"No, never had the pleasure." Her old feelings were trying to surface, but she wasn't ready for that. Time healed nothing, she knew that. "Is it okay if we come inside?"

He paused. "Sure," he said, still hesitant. "Did – that help you got. Did you…disclose everything?"

"Yes," she said. "But it's confidential. Doctor-patient," Angie continued, realizing too late that it would practically scream that she'd been inside Arkham, the only mental hospital on the Narrows.

Daniel nodded. "Alright…yeah, come in. Who's your friend?"

Angie turned to her; Jane was looking at Daniel with an inscrutable expression, still not quite meeting his eyes. "This is Jane," she answered. "We met inside."

"Inside?" _Here it comes! _"You weren't in Arkham, were you?"

No sense in lying. "Yes," Angie admitted. She was wearing an Arkham-labeled gym outfit, he must have known it already.

"Oh," he said simply. No real right answer to something like that. "Come inside, then."

"Thank you, Daniel."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

_**Again, Into the Black**_

Daniel's house was nice, in that rare Narrows neighborhood that still supported a sense of higher class. Warm wood paneling, unobtrusive light, the faint scent of cinnamon; it should have been a comforting atmosphere, yet Angie couldn't help but feel the strings winding up inside her. It was dread she felt; perhaps for the entire situation, she couldn't be sure. Of course it was; what else would it be?

"So," Daniel said nonchalantly as he led them into the living room. "If you were in Arkham, is it a safe bet that someone will be looking for the two of you soon?"

"I guess so," Angie answered uncertainly. They were inmates; but with Crane now a patient, how would the new system run? "There were criminals everywhere, it wasn't safe. The locks were disabled…"

"I know," he said. "I understand." He looked at Jane from his position next to the fireplace. "Is she okay?" he murmured to Angie.

She hadn't realized she'd drifted so close to him. Stepping back, she glanced over at the girl herself. Jane perched on the edge of the couch, stared at nothing.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know what happened to her."

Daniel nodded thoughtfully. "Before the main power went out, I had the news on the TV…they were saying that there was something wrong with the water supply, on the main Narrows. I didn't get what it was – do you think that could have something to do with…her?"

"Maybe," she said. "Arkham is pretty much dead center. What about you? Don't you get water here?"

"We have a private supply, a well. Too far from the main population, you see."

Too far from middle-class, rather. She'd read about that trend before she'd gone inside; the wealthy, on the outskirts of the Narrows, opting for a large private well instead of the public sewers. Regular water treatment in Gotham was as questionable as everything else; nothing had changed for the better, she understood. If she'd had a choice in the matter, she'd have been drinking private water herself for the last few years.

"We have a generator, too…" he said, misreading her pause as an observation of the dim lighting from the wall sconces. The fireplace was also lit, with a low flickering mass of flames.

Coming back to herself, Angie nodded. "So you haven't had any trouble here?"

Daniel thought for a moment, eyes downcast. "Not yet," he said hesitantly. "Though we're not all too far from the centre of the Narrows, really. In fact, now that I think about it, there was some noise a while ago, right before you arrived…"

"What kind of noise?"

"Shouting….broken glass. Maybe a scream…it sounded so far from where I was." He shrugged slightly. "I…stayed upstairs, in the extra bedroom, for a while. No one knows about it, it's not really used. There are no windows to the outside. It's a perfect place to…"

"Hide?" Angie volunteered.

He acquiesced to the implication of his cowardice. "Yes, to hide."

Angie remembered what Jane had said at the beginning of their walk over; _he follows._ She hadn't noticed anything at the time; if it was who she thought it was…either Jane was delusional and paranoid, or this _follower_ was not someone who'd be detected so easily by someone like Angie.

"If…there's trouble again…" she started.

Daniel nodded. "I was just going to suggest that. You two go hide in there."

"Thank you again," Angie said. "I know this must be…"

"It is strange, yeah. I thought you'd be…I don't know. I thought you'd be angry."

Angie shrugged. "I couldn't have expected you to do anything else back then, really."

"Okay…I didn't know you'd see it that way. Leaving you, you mean?"

"Yeah." _What else?_

"Hey," he said suddenly, straightening. "Where is…"

Angie followed his gaze to the couch. The _empty _couch. "Jane," she said, alarmed.

"Don't worry," Daniel said quickly. "She can't have really gone anywhere…"

"Jane!" Angie called, instinctively heading down the dark hall, presumably leading to the backyard. Daniel followed.

"Not too loud," he warned.

"I thought your wife wasn't home?"

"She's not. I meant for anyone else who might be hanging around outside…don't want to advertise that there's one pretty girl in here who's lost track of another."

_He thinks I'm pretty – why does that feel so strange?_

Angie came suddenly to a widening of the hall, facing a pair of French doors. One of them stood ajar; beyond the glass, past the sliver of relative darkness, lay the sound of wind through trees and little else Angie could discern. Daniel put a hand on her shoulder, and her heart instantly jumped into her throat.

"Sorry," he said. "I'll go out and look for her. It's a big yard, but I doubt she's had time to leave it."

"Okay," Angie said uncertainly.

He pushed past her, then turned back. "We don't want anyone to see you, get it?"

"Yeah…"

"Alright. I'll be right back."

He disappeared into that darkness, and it appeared to swallow him whole. The scene was reminiscent of the minute Angie had found Jane in Corridor F, facing that impenetrable black expanse while a strange whisper of insanity had withdrawn. Jane had seemed almost to follow it then; now it was she who lead the way.

A sound from above came as unexpectedly as everything tonight had; Angie jumped, but couldn't place immediately what it was or where it came from. She waited, tensely, in silence; it did not occur again. In her immediate memory, it sounded absurdly like the effect heard in a _Friday the 13th _movie, while Jason stalked a stupid teen. She pushed that thought away. Feeling that she had little choice, she turned to follow the vague direction the noise had come from. She hit a figurative wall immediately; it had seemed to come from above, and the stairs were near the front door. It would be dangerously foolish to go exploring that far on her own, especially on a night like this. She turned back to the doors to wait for Daniel to return.

She jumped to see Jane standing there, Daniel at her back.

"Jane," she gasped.

"Angie," Jane said. "He's here."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

_**The Kindest Words**_

"Inside, girls," Daniel said, ushering Jane forward. She skittered to Angie, and Daniel turned back to close the doors on the cold, sweeping wind.

"Who?" Angie whispered to her. She didn't want Daniel to hear of this yet; he would jump to the conclusion that Jane was crazy, when there was the distinct possibility that this was absolute sanity. Crane could be following them; with a pang of near-jealousy, Angie realized that he'd always had a thing for Jane. She brushed it aside as soon as she could. This was nothing to covet, this attention. It left people in shock, left them inside their shells. She was lucky, as lucky as an inmate of an asylum could be.

"Him," Jane answered in a similarly hushed tone. "Scarecrow."

It was a phrase that chilled Angie's blood, even further than the rest of the evening had. She'd heard that term before; _Scarecrow._ In her frenzied rifling through the patient files in Jonnie's old office in Arkham, in the sudden and tortured screams she'd heard once she'd been moved underground, again when Jane had been returned to her in this weird, sporadically catatonic state. If she hadn't remembered it before, it was coming up in color now; truly, she'd been hearing _Scarecrow's _name knocking around Arkham for nearly as long as she'd been there.

Now, he'd even followed them here.

Clearly, Jane had replaced Dr. Jonathan Crane with Scarecrow in her mind. The fact that this was something she seemed to have in common with more than a few fellow patients deepened Angie's latest shade of dread. She felt that the answer to this particular question lay just outside her reasoning; what made Crane a Scarecrow was beyond her, for the moment. She knew it was true, knew it as unquestioningly as Jane seemed to; all that remained was to connect the last stray dots. For that, she didn't yet have the means.

Numbly, she led the way back to Daniel's living room. Jane followed easily this time, though she did seem to stay closer to Angie than before she'd briefly disappeared. Daniel cleared his throat behind them.

"Listen, you both look really tired," he started. "It's understandable, considering all you've been through tonight. Why don't you both go rest upstairs? I can bring you something to eat or drink, if you like."

Angie turned, and Jane moved to stand just behind her. "You want to keep us out of sight?" she asked.

He paused, then shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what else to do," he admitted. "You seem to be in danger, and you really do look exhausted." He stepped closer, gently placing his hands over her shoulders. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. His warm brown eyes studied hers, looking into the amber she knew he'd once found intoxicating. Inexplicably, she felt sick. "Go on, rest. I'll keep you both safe."

She breathed in again, her unease showing no signs of improvement. Defeated, she nodded.

"Come on, Jane," she said, taking the girl's hand. "Let's go upstairs."

_You need to rest_

_Angie, just listen to my voice, and relax_

_I'll help you_

Upstairs, in that windowless bedroom, Angie pressed her eyes shut once more against that voice. Crane, at his most helpful. She'd had trouble sleeping, she remembered. Some kind of relentless dream keeping her up at night. What it had been of, she didn't recall.

The room was nice enough, though a little creepy in that airtight way. Without windows, it seemed to lack eyes; what would have been a tastefully lit guest bedroom felt more like a thinly disguised prison cell. Angie sat on the queen-sized bed, hands tensely gripping the edge of the mattress. She could hear Jane hovering nearby, somewhere, but Angie was currently occupied with her inner Crane.

_Angie, listen_

_Calm down_

"Angie," Dr. Crane's strong, clear voice broke through her painful haze. "Angie, I need you to calm down and focus for me. Can you do that?"

She couldn't stop crying. Reason and logic had left her for the moment; she'd been crippled by a torrent of tears for what felt like hours, after days of no food and no sleep at her own hands. Dr. Crane had tried to help her, but she'd plummeted like a stone rather suddenly on Friday; now, in her violent grief, she realized it must be Monday, at least.

The pinprick in her arm barely fazed her, curled in a human ball on her narrow bed. The orderlies had been giving her tranquilizing shots all weekend; indeed, they were responsible for any moments of peace she'd had. Now Crane sat gently at her bedside, hushed her weeping, smoothed the cotton sheet over her tense skin. After a time, she quieted, her breath became less ragged, her swollen eyes cleared. Crane made a gesture, and the orderly left them alone.

"Angie," he said softly, bending down to her ear. "Can you tell me what happened?"

She gave no answer; how to say it out loud, after so long with the words blurring inside her into abstract meaning?

"I see you had a visitor on Friday," Jon offered. "Was that visit upsetting to you?"

Infinitely calmer, Angie sighed. It now seemed possible, somehow, that an end could be reached. An end to the day, at least.

"It was Dr. Cameron," she croaked, finally. She hadn't been able to call him by his first name since that upsetting visit.

Jonathan nodded. "Ah. Had I known, I would not have approved of it, Angie. I'm sorry I wasn't here to advise the staff. Perhaps if you let me leave a notice…" he stopped as she shook her head.

"No, you can't. It would only cause trouble for my mom. He's the nice guy, no one thinks of him like that…"

"I do," he said quietly. He grew ever closer to the role of hero to her; as he caught her looking at him in silence, he briefly smiled, sealing the role with the appearance of modesty. "I confess I have little patience for men like Daniel Cameron."

Angie gave a watery smile back, but it didn't hold up long. "I…can't forget it," she admitted, after a moment.

Dr. Crane smiled again, this time like an angel who held the key to her salvation. Years later, as she sat glued to a dingy guestroom bed, Angie would recall a deeper glint to his angelic wire-rimmed eyes; at the time, she was drowning, and this handsome man was the only dry land in sight.

"I think I can help you with that," he said.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

_**Gifts **_

Angie came back to herself on that gray bedspread, blinking in the disturbed dusty air of the long-left room. A noise had awakened her; she forced her stiff body up from the bed, cautiously. Jane was nowhere in sight. _There is an attached bathroom,_ she told herself, _don't panic_. To her relief, she found a sliver of light shining beneath the door; _she must be in there_. A few less pleasant options soon occurred to her, but she gladly ignored them for the moment.

"Jane?" she hesitantly called, reluctant to stir the air further. There was no noise from downstairs; she couldn't recall if she'd been able to hear Daniel before falling into her memory or not. No answer came from behind the bathroom door.

Angie stood tensely for a moment, unsure. Eventually the light beneath the door went out, which did nothing to calm her nerves. The knob turned with unnatural slowness, and Angie backed up a few steps, jumping when her knees encountered the bed.

A shape lumbered into the room; beyond the now open door, Angie could hear the unexpected sounds of the autumn rainstorm sweeping dead leaves across distant rooftops. Orange streetlamps shone wetly on the frame of a very small window set in the shower stall; _no windows to the outside _apparently carried a more casual meaning to a man accustomed to safety at home.

The figure moved forward, hands clutched to chest. Fleetingly, Angie saw another shape skitter across the dark bathroom, but there was no time to process the meaning of it. The person before her stopped just shy of the dim light.

Her brain was slack; all intake, no thought. Finally, into her numbing and momentary stupidity, the figure entered the circle of dirty light. Jane stood there, to Angie's immense relief; it soon lessened, though, as she saw that the girl was soaking wet and shivering. She held something close to her chest, some rectangle of light paper.

"Jane?" she whispered, hesitant to step forward. "What – what happened?"

Jane's gray eyes had not rested directly on hers for some time; now they did, abruptly. "He gives this," she gasped, the cold audible in her voice. She thrust the package toward Angie, whose instinct it was to jump out of reach. She steadied herself, and took the dubious gift.

Without looking at it, she reached out and wrapped the shivering girl in her dry and relatively warm arms. Leading her to the bed, she pulled the bedspread off of the mattress and drew it around her friend as well as she could. When Jane was safely swaddled and sitting securely, eyes again downcast and distracted, Angie took a seat beside her and held the package to the light.

It was a file, a manila folder; the kind one would see in a doctor's office. The patient name was printed with unusual clarity in the tab at the top. The papers within rustled uneasily; it was a feeling Angie felt keenly as she read the label there.

All these months, obsessively scrambling through Jonnie's patient files, all to no avail. Now, when she'd stopped looking for her own secrets so suddenly her head had nearly spun, she had the documents in her hands. She'd found Jane's file in the search, but had had scarcely enough time to find the girl's reason for being there before she'd been chased out of the office. Now, Jane had returned the favor.

_But how_

"Where did you get this?" Angie asked, knowing it would do no good. Predictably, Jane was silent.

_Perhaps there are more ways around than Danny boy has told us, Angel baby?_

_It is rather an old house_

…on rather an old island. The wind rattled the building to its foundations, startling Angie as she was irresistibly drawn to the file's contents. The jump was purely reactive; her conscious mind was on the papers she was about to uncover. As much as she'd wanted it at Arkham, however inexplicably, she now found herself almost ill with apprehension. Still, she continued.

Inside lay her past with Crane. Of course, she knew it all already, at least from her perspective. What had she wanted this for in the first place, again?

_To know what he thought of you, right?_

_Like he'd really write, "Angie: hot chick in Max ward"_

That internal monologue was wearing out its welcome. Ignoring the sounds of her own thoughts, Angie looked over the personal file, the identification photo taken at her admittance, the tiny tapes recorded during certain therapy sessions, and other notes regarding medications and ward moves. She had nothing to play the audio tapes on; gladly, she found that the transcripts had been included. This was too fortuitous to be…well, real, it seemed. The entire evening had been surreal; could she expect things to start making sense now?

Bending nearer to the papers, Angie realized that if she wanted to avoid future heart attacks, she had to keep a closer eye on Jane. Resolving to do just that, she strained her eyes in the half light, and began to review her history.

_Patient 16B: Angel Adlam_


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

_**Mistrust **_

_Patient displays inability to accept conventional treatment. However, it is not believed that substance #bd44 or corresponding prop therapy is required or in best interest. Further therapy is needed, but best outcome may be reached through hypnotherapeutic memory rep-_

Angie stopped; a noise had snatched her attention from her file. Something again unidentifiable; if she was to survive the night, let alone the entire ordeal, she'd realized that she'd have to keep one eye open at all times. She knew Jane hadn't moved; something from downstairs? Daniel – she now remembered that he'd upset her rather a lot during that visit; maddeningly, she still couldn't recall how.

_Wait_

_The visit_

_He knew you were at Arkham_

"Yeah," she agreed. "He must have known…"

So why ask? He'd known she was at Arkham because he'd seen her there, he'd known she was on the Narrows – her heart fluttered, shuffled at the big black hole that was opening up in her memory. Something was not right. So much was unexplainable, so many faces in her past had turned out to be masks. There was still so much medical jargon to wade through in her file, and she felt like a train was approaching her at full speed. At this rate, whatever secret lay in wait for her would never be uncovered.

"Hey, Angel," Daniel said. Again, lost in her thoughts; she was furious at herself for forgetting so soon, for thinking so intently that she'd missed something as obvious as the opening of the bedroom door.

"Hey," she answered, fighting the urge to scream out her stupidity. It struck her then – the latest in a sudden stream of blows – that the way he'd said her name was different; somehow familiar, from long ago. Almost with a slur –

Daniel seated himself beside Angie, sandwiching her between himself and Jane. Still, Jane made no move.

"I just came to see if you need anything," he said.

Thinking for a moment, Angie was acutely aware of his proximity. "No," she said. "I think we're okay for now."

"What's that you've got there?" he asked, reaching out for the file she'd snapped shut reflexively.

"Oh, uh…" she stammered, trying nonchalantly to keep it from him. She realized that there was nothing to say about it, and no way she could hope to hang on to it in his house. "Just a file from the hospital. Nothing of relevance, I just randomly picked it up as we left."

"Ah," he murmured, successfully grabbing it from her. "Sounds fishy to me."

_Indeed. _Angie laughed nervously as he began to casually shuffle through the pages. Fortunately, he didn't appear to be paying close attention.

"So," he started, finally looking up from the papers. "What was it like in there, anyway?"

She shrugged. "It was okay, actually."

"Your doctor nice?"

"Yeah," she said uncertainly. Crane had, technically, been nice to her for the majority of her time there. "Well, not to Jane so much," she added, looking over at her friend.

She was shocked to see Jane looking past her, to Daniel. Daniel himself seemed a little thrown off; he tossed the file onto the bed, to Angie's relief, and got up.

"Is she okay?" he asked her, moving in front of Jane. Jane rose to meet him, almost seeming defensive. He lowered his voice as he approached her; the effect was unsettling.

"Is Jane okay?" he said again, pressing ever closer.

"Y'know, she doesn't really like close contact," Angie said, stepping between them. Daniel looked at her with surprise; in turn, he swung around her and took Jane by the arm.

"I have a much nicer place for you," he said. "It's warm, and cozy. You can rest there."

"Daniel, let her go," Angie said, more firmly than she felt.

"No, we're okay," he insisted. Not surprisingly, Jane seemed too stunned to resist as he corralled her to the bedroom door. "She'll be safe in the other room, and then you and I can be alone."

Now this was a surprise; the thought chilled Angie to the bone. Almost in reflex, she stormed over to the two figures, forcibly separating them. Daniel turned with similar speed and gave her a blinding backhand. Startled more than hurt, she stumbled and fell to the floor.

"Angel," he ordered. "Don't you move from there, I'm warning you."

Then came the greatest surprise yet; Jane leapt into action, snapping her arm forward to punch Daniel across the jaw. Before he had a chance to react, she kicked impossibly high with a well-aimed blow to his head. He staggered back, but recovered in time to block the next attack; with an uncharacteristic growl, Jane lunged at him, teeth gnashing for his throat.

Angie watched, dumbstruck, from the floor. Daniel threw his arm up to ward Jane off, and managed to smack her away in the process. Having regained the upper hand, he took the opportunity and grasped Jane's wrist, turning her around to pin both behind her back.

It had been a startling display. "I'll be right back," Daniel promised, and then they were gone. The door swung shut behind them, and from the hallway Angie could hear the continued sounds of the scuffle. All too abruptly it ceased, leaving her with a horrible silence and a terrible fear.

The sound of a slamming door, and the immediate hammering of fists and feet on the other side of it; Jane, trying with the rage of the insane to get out. Soon after Daniel returned to Angie, unconcerned with Jane's attempts to escape.

"Now," he said, with a darkness the likes of which Angie feared she had indeed heard before, "we can be alone."

_A/N:_

_Crane returns in the next chapter, if only in memory. There is a stranger in Daniel's house, though, promising a more immediate return for what is his. This house is old, and full of secrets. There's more than one way to hide a Scarecrow. Stay tuned for a guide to insanity, soon. Thanks for keeping up!_

_- nH_


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: I must warn you to pay attention to the stream of Angie's consciousness; that is, when she is inside one of her aggressive memories, and when she's in the present, in Daniel's house on the Narrows. It flip-flops back and forth a bit, which is just the way she experiences it. I believe it's important to go mad with her, but do let me know if further explanation is needed. Trust yourselves, though, first. Your first instincts will probably be right. _

Chapter 12

_**The Lines Blur**_

There was a moment between them, an expanse of silence; Angie was dumbstruck, at a complete loss for words. Daniel stood over her, staring down into her confusion with a terrible sneer.

"Don't look at me like that," he started. Angie immediately twitched, as his voice broke the air with that subtle violence only words could manage. Shaking his head, he went on. "Why…why are you here? Why did you have to come back, you-" he stopped, bit the words off before more bitterness could be spilled. Why bother, when he'd already displayed such a shocking lack of stability?

"I…we needed help," she said numbly, sounding such the little girl that she made herself sick. Coming back to herself, she forced a bolder approach. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded, pulling herself into a slightly less vulnerable position.

He laughed, once, an angry sound. "Like you don't know, you really don't understand." His gaze snapped to the bed, with a strange mixture of revulsion and heat. Turning her head, she realized his attention had come to rest on the folder. "What went on in that hospital? What, did they rewrite your brain? All those months spent taking your revenge, piece by piece, you just suddenly _forgive_ me, just decide that all you've done to my life and my _career _doesn't matter, that the mistake I made doesn't matter…?"

He stopped in his tirade as Angie rose as swiftly as she could. At first, he jumped out of her reach; then, seeing her unsure posture, he lunged forward. This time Angie was not so surprised; she threw herself back, losing her balance as her knees hit the bed, toppling back. A perilous position for one in such a situation. Immediately, she tried again to rise, but Daniel took the opportunity to push her down, and to hold her there.

All his weight on her upper arms…Angie felt sick, horribly unmistakably ill. She struggled, used all the strength she had, but his was greater.

"Angie," he growled. Softening his tone but not his hold, he went on. "How could you forget? How could you think _I'd _forget-?"

"Forget what?" she whispered, eyes tearing against her will. The lines blurred, the visions doubled, and she thought that what she'd forgotten was becoming a terrible possibility.

"Look at you," he whispered back; it could have been pity. He lifted her by her arms, pushed her back so that she lay on the bed completely. Never did his hold on her falter, but she wouldn't have had a mind to resist him if it had.

"You know," he said. Inches away from her eyes, lips, skin, he said it again. "You know."

_All this time spent daydreaming about you_

It startled her the way her memories had startled her all night; a voice, her voice, years ago. An inner voice; the sound of Angel Adlam's thoughts.

In the present, she closed her eyes, and wished reality away. Daniel moved, pinning her at the elbows with his knees so he might sit up more comfortably. It seemed that he didn't quite know what to do with her. At the moment, she didn't quite know what to do, period.

_All this time spent daydreaming about you_

_I never thought that when it happened I'd be wishing for it to stop_

"Come back, Angie," a familiar voice called. From hours and years and worlds away, it drew her through madness and misery, but did not erase the memory. Not yet.

"Angie," Dr. Crane said, in the Arkham Asylum of a few years past. "Are you back?"

Three is the charm, Angie thought; one life in the present, with Daniel crushing the breath out of her while Jane hammers madly at some unknown door. One in the distant past, with her teenaged naivety being thrust the hell out of her by the handsome, funny, trustworthy friend. The last in the consciousness of recollection, smack in the middle, with her blue-eyed hero of a psychiatrist making efforts to erase what lay behind in order to smooth what lay ahead.

Was it a dream, a memory?

"I'm here," she said, with the uncertainty of youth.

"Alright," Crane said gently. "Start from the beginning."

She took a breath, and felt tears the size of oceans swell from her lungs to her eyes. She swallowed them with difficulty.

"It's going to stop, after?" she asked.

"Yes," Crane promised, leaning into the bright light of sunrise. "I will stop it all for you. I can help you, Angie. Now, tell me all you can."

"Okay," she breathed. "I'd been hanging out with him for months. We were almost like friends. We _were _friends; me and Dr. Cameron, Daniel. I know, I was like seventeen, but that – I…thought it was real. When that huge summer storm hit last year, we were stuck at his house until the rain let up. It was the middle of the night. I never thought – I never expected this, from him."

Writhing on that dingy bedspread, Angie gasped as pain seared her skull; it was all coming undone, all the ends fraying. She couldn't keep track of things; where was when, and which was where, and who was what. Her memories were mixing, she was becoming confused. If ever Crane had done good work, it had been to keep this chaos under control.

She cried out, and struggled against the pain in her head. Something, some weight top of her, stiffened. Dimly, in what she thought may be the present, Daniel saw her inability to function, and took his belt off. Turning her over, he used it to tie her hands behind her back; she could barely feel it. In this maelstrom, she could barely feel anything.

"I don't know what to do with you, Angie," some far-off voice said from the vicinity of her bound hands. _Daniel, after the riot, in his house on the Narrows._ Could it be real?

Gradually the pain faded, and the haze darkened.

_I've come undone_

Into the dark there came a light, and one world, a memory, surfaced above the others. Sunlight, cold metal, sterile bright rooms.

_Welcome back, baby_

Arkham, and Angie at age eighteen; two years ago. Crane sat close to her; they faced each other with no table between them.

"You understand," he said, "that if the treatment ever…comes undone, this will surface, and there is a risk of a brief psychotic break?"

Angie hadn't known psychotic breaks were available in _brief,_ but she nodded. Crane returned it with a small smile.

"I believe it's worth the risk," he agreed. "I think, when you can't stop hurting yourself, and you can't stop following Mr. Cameron around screaming accusations, however valid, and when you can't go a night without waking in agony…perhaps the only thing left for you is to forget."

Angie nodded silently. She had tried to get past it, tried to live without it; but her mind played cruel tricks on her, bringing her back to Daniel's bedroom every night. Though in reality his very personal violence had occurred only once, in Angie's world it surfaced and ruined and devoured all, every hour of every day. It had led her to do crazy things; kidnap a boy from school, call Daniel at all hours of the night just to make sure he slept as poorly as she did. When that nightly interruption wasn't enough, she had gone back to the hospital to scream the truth at the doctor's colleagues. It had not gone well for him; when she had been committed to Arkham by her unsympathetic mother, she had lost track of his status, but he had kindly enlightened her during that lone accusatory visit. Although on that day he had told her of his 'transfer' from the Gotham City Cancer Center to the clinic on the Narrows, she'd had other things to concentrate on; his pet names for her, for instance. _Slut, Lolita, tease…_ She had not realized that he considered himself as ruined as she knew she was; she could not know what he'd fantasized about, all the years she'd been inside.

"You won't remember this conversation, if all goes smoothly," Dr. Crane said. "We will need to replace the incident with something equally important in your mind; I'll take care of that. Lastly, I must insist that your memory of the procedure be buried as well." He stopped, took his glasses off to let his blue eyes shine out at her. "People in high places would not understand."

"Yes," she said, looking forward to the oblivion. "Thank you, Doctor."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

_**Obey**_

Restrained; Angie's hands were trapped behind her back, somehow. Vaguely she recalled; _Daniel, he tied me up. But why?_

She peeled her swollen eyes open, remembering tears without context. The room was dark, darker than it had been. The sound of a wet fall wind still issued from the bathroom; the storm hadn't ended yet. It can't have been that long, can it?

She remembered then that there should be more noise, more sporadic hammering from beyond the bedroom door. A girl, yes, fighting for release in another room. There was none. Perhaps she's just tired. Perhaps she's decided to find another way to escape; something more quiet, something more sane. Yes, and then perhaps pigs have decided to fly and Hell has decided to freeze over. Jane was not sane, and she hadn't been quiet since…since Daniel had accosted her and locked her away.

The recollection spurred Angie to attempt to move, which brought her bound hands back to her immediate attention. The silence she'd awoken to suggested that Daniel wasn't in the room; she couldn't be sure, but if she was wrong she'd soon find out. She wriggled her hands to get the feeling back; the binds were thick, likely Daniel's belt. Leather, hard to sever, certainly impossible without help. She cried out faintly before she could stop herself, and nothing answered her. _So_ _Daniel's not here. Well, that's something. _

Still, the situation was looking hopeless. Her hands were tied behind her back, the girl she'd sworn to protect was locked – silently – in another room by the tall dark and apparently dangerous Dr. Cameron. He was probably coming back for her, after…no, she'd not let herself think of what he was busy doing now. It would only lead to the memory of what he had done before.

Defeated, Angie lay helpless on Daniel's eerily preserved bed. The memories of that night surfaced lazily; the picture was still not whole. She knew she'd been there, on that very bed; the feeling that accompanied the image of that darkened room was one of subjugation, powerlessness. There was still a seed yet to be uncovered, but Angie had to admit that it wasn't looking good.

_Crash shatter_

If ever blood could freeze, Angie's would have then. The sudden sound of calamity came from the bathroom, momentarily drowning out the sound of the wind outside. Was it Daniel, was he in the dark bathroom waiting to scare her to death? _If so, he's doing a bang-up job._

Frozen in her seriously disadvantaged position, all she could do was watch the bathroom doorway for signs of life. Seeing her doom approach wouldn't save her, but she couldn't help herself from staring, wide-eyed, into the dark. With no cautious hesitation an outline filled the space, blocking the faint light from outside. It was human-shaped, smaller than Daniel, shorter and slimmer. Jane? No, not her.

"Angel," he said. The voice was so familiar, so frighteningly close to her heart. It was a heart that had betrayed her before, and so she remained silent. "Angie…let me help you."

The man started forward, and Angie's breath caught. He was slight, delicate, and at the moment looked like he'd had a rough night. Dr. Jonathan Crane, the young director of Arkham Asylum. He wore a nearly demolished straightjacket over his usual tailored blue suit, and his trademark rectangular glasses were conspicuously absent. Blood marked his pale face in a dark smear under his right eye.

"Doctor?" she managed.

All the horrible things he had done, all the terrors he'd been responsible for; could he still be her hero? Did that Jonnie Crane still exist? As he reached her, extending a hand, carefully brushing her hair back from her face, that feeling resurfaced – safety, security, trust. Was he…worthy? Was he safe?

He quietly hushed her as she started to cry. Now she remembered what he had tried to bury for her, and this last piece of the puzzle didn't hurt quite as much as the first revelations had an hour ago. If she could so quickly return to the cold, the loneliness, and the pain, why could she never seem to access the warmth and the calm? Crane stroked her hair, kneeling down to her eye level.

"Why would you come back here?" he whispered.

"I didn't know," she whimpered. She hated the sound and soon rectified her tone. "I didn't remember." This time her voice shook, but it did so with strength behind it.

He nodded, glancing at the floor. "I see. My treatment worked perhaps better than I'd hoped."

Angie sniffled, managing to get her tears under control. "Are you going to untie me?"

Now focused, Crane looked into her face once again. "I don't know if that's wise," he said to her utter shock.

"What?" A stupid question, a reflex. "Why not?"

He sighed, seeming to consider his answer carefully. "I have a lot at stake here," he said finally. Then he laughed; a sudden, strange sound. For the first time, Angie caught a glimpse of the madness she had before only suspected. "I'm…different now. I've been changed, I've been released."

His hand in her hair became more aggressive, twisting her neck almost painfully. With something like derision he released her, then grabbed her arm to forcibly flip her onto her stomach. Angie made a small noise as he placed a hand unconsciously on her back, putting his weight on it as he stared off into space. Eventually she felt the weight lift as he relaxed, coming back to himself.

"Oh, Angie," he said, again bending to her level. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you think…" he stopped. "When I get to you, it won't be like that. I don't want to own you that way, Angel."

_How do you want to own me?_

He rose, unmindful of her position, it seemed. Pacing smoothly in and out of her field of vision, he muttered to himself. She caught sporadic tones here and there, but could not make out any full words. She vaguely remembered behaving in a similar fashion, years ago – is this what she had looked like? Bloody crazy.

"Jonnie?" she said eventually.

He stopped his movements. "Angel," he said as if seeing her for the first time. "If I'm going to put myself at risk by releasing you, I'll need you to agree to something first."

_No, not- _

"What?" she said. "What do you want me to do?"

He would not disappoint, it seemed; he went straight for the promise she knew she could not keep.

"I need Jane," he said. "I followed you both here. I got in by mere chance, so I don't know this house the way you must. You can bring me to her-"

"No," she said, crumbling again. "No, you can't have her! I promised nothing bad would happen to her, but I'm the one who brought her here, I can't let her down again!"

"Angel," he said sharply, pressing close once more. Despite his tone, she could not help but feel the comfort he'd provided to her for years before she found out what he'd been doing to everyone else. "What haven't I done for you? I erased your pain, I provided you with a home away from your mother. After all the tricks you pulled at Arkham – though I understand that you didn't know better after the treatment – I need you to do this one thing for me. Mr. Cameron should be dealt with as soon as possible. Jane needs us now, both of us."

_She doesn't need you_

Unfortunately, Angie did need him; for release, for freedom. With fingers crossed, she nodded.

He brightened. "Alright, excellent." As he bent over her bonds, she saw the return to the brisk but optimistic doctor she'd known at Arkham. His slender hands quickly freed her. "I'll have to hold you to it, of course. You must know I have ways to ensure compliance."

_I'll bet he does, sweetie! You sure know how to pick 'em._

Finally she was released; Angie sat up, rubbing her sore wrists.

"What now?" she said, regarding him with caution.

"Now," Crane said, his voice darkening like the blue sky before a black storm, "we release the mind to subdue the body."

He reached into the dark blue jacket, producing some kind of burlap sack. Angie recoiled as he began to pull it over his head; horror dawned as he finished and turned to her, now masked as visibly as he had been _invisibly_ for all the years he'd operated Arkham. Now, horribly, Angie understood.

"Angel," the infamous Scarecrow said, "don't turn away from me." His voice was now monstrous, a demon with the face of a mutilated doll. "I don't want to have to change you."

She believed it. Now, in the face of all the evidence, she believed that he didn't want to hurt her; more than that, though, she believed that he _could._ That he _had _hurt others, hurt Jane.

_Don't disobey_

_Not yet_

"Okay," she said. "You and me; let's go find Jane."


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

**_Abandon All Hope  
_**

…

_He's crazy, baby, surely you got that?_

The Scarecrow murmured to himself as he paced the room, his words muffled by the burlap mask over his face. Angie didn't know what to expect from him, but if all those screams in Arkham were founded on this….she didn't want to do anything to inflame him.

"J..Jonnie?" she said hesitantly.

He rounded on her. "No," he said firmly, "not Jonnie. _Scarecrow."_

"Scarecrow," she breathed, before she could restrain it. Pulling herself together, she went on. "Yes, Scarecrow. What are you going to do?"

"Do?"

"Yes…to Daniel?"

"Ah, to Mr. Cameron," he answered; it was strange to hear Crane's clipped inflection in this dark, rumbling voice. He didn't grace Daniel with the title of Doctor, Angie also noted. "He will be dealt with, yes. I've had plans for him for some time now. The opportunity has never been present; tonight is perfect, it will be perfect."

"Okay," Angie said hollowly.

"And Jane?" he continued, seeming to read her mind. "Jane will be mine again, thanks to you. We…have some issues to work out, some rifts to patch up. You will help in that."

_Sure, sure. Go on and help the freakin madman get close to Janie, maybe she'll bite his face off._

Angie sighed; she didn't see how she could have any other choice. "I don't know where he put her," she said.

"We'll find her."

And with that, Angie placed whatever trust she had left into the lesser Evil, the only one who could help her escape the man who'd held her captive inside herself for years. She wondered what his plans for Daniel were, and if they could leave the man as scarred as all of Crane's other patients. As scarred as Daniel had left her, in fact. She knew she should want revenge, but somehow…she was too tired for that. She was so spun, so pulled in every direction. Angie didn't know what she wanted, even after all this time convinced she had her wish-list figured out.

"Angie," the Scarecrow said. "We could go out the way you came in, or we could go down the way I came up. I think we should take the hidden stairwell."

Angie couldn't tell if this was a question; either way, she had no better ideas. She nodded.

"Good. In here," he said, leading the way into the bathroom.

Angie didn't recall if she'd been in the little room before tonight, but if she had she would not likely have noticed the tall wood panel Crane had left standing open. Just inside the door from the bedroom there was a floor-to-ceiling cabinet, rather like a wardrobe. In the back of this, another door, undisguised, swung in to reveal the passage Crane had taken; a kind of spare housekeeping route to the top floor, Angie guessed. The dark inside was complete, intimidating.

"Where does this go?" she asked.

"The cellar. I got in there from outside, the backyard. I heard you on the first floor, all of you, and it didn't seem like the right time…" Crane trailed off as he stepped into the darkness. Angie followed him reluctantly.

"I waited for a while, looked around the cellar for another way upstairs. After a bit it got quiet; then I found this."

They were in the thick of the darkness now, with nothing to light their way. Angie strained forward to hear Crane's voice, hoping not to have to hold onto him. She didn't feel comfortable touching him anymore. The gruesome mask came between them like a stone wall; she was losing a lot today, her life was rewriting itself.

_Things were okay before, before the riot, before the escapes, before tonight._

_Why is this happening, why does everything have to break apart?_

Finally they came to the end. There was a little more light here, but still not much. Angie followed Crane's shadowy form through the stacks of piled boxes and crates; the Camerons had not unpacked all of their life together, it seemed.

_Maybe they're not even together anymore, huh, Angel? Maybe Daniel went cuckoo and killed her! What d'ya think of that?_

"No," she whispered, stopping to close her eyes for an instant. "He wouldn't…"

"Wouldn't what?"

Angie opened her eyes to the darkened cellar; Crane had turned, facing her now without the mask. Yes, every mask anyone had ever worn for Angie was coming off tonight, it would seem. The blue eyes that had so enthralled her in her youth now shone with a notable madness. She didn't answer.

"What is left for him? What would you still believe him incapable of, Angie?"

She shook her head. "Nothing, nothing. I just…."

"Are you…hearing things?" he asked, stepping closer.

"No, I'm not. I – I'm just…" she stammered. "Wondering where his wife is. That's all."

A pause. In the dark his face was inscrutable. "Do you think he killed her?"

"No! No, I don't…"

"I wouldn't put it past a man like Mr. Cameron." He turned back to the path ahead of them.

_Neither would I, hon. _

"Stop!" she cried, against her will. Although it hadn't been directed at him, Crane did stop, turning immediately and stalking back to where she stood.

"Angel," he said firmly, taking her by the shoulders, "you need to get a hold of yourself. I know it's been difficult for you tonight; it's been a violent time for everyone. That's why we need to get Jane out of here, get you both back to Arkham where you'll be safe. Once we're back, I can perform your therapy again." He stopped, letting her go to look around the room. "Do you want to stay here?"

"What? No, Doc - _Scarecrow_…no, I'll come with you. You don't know this house, remember?"

He nodded absently, still searching the shadows. "Alright. Let's get out of here. And keep those voices quiet. We'll deal with them later."

Angie nodded and followed him mutely; as he led her to the stairway onto the main floor, she licked her wounds, pushed away the feeling of being abandoned by her only hero. That had happened a long time ago, she realized, and the man before her tonight was the enemy. Coming up the stairs, with Crane's hand on the door, Angie only hoped she could handle both he and Daniel; Jane needed someone now. Angie knew what that was like, and she would not let it end for Jane the way it was ending for herself.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

_**What We Have Become**_

The lower level of the house was eerily still; every move the two made seemed to crack like a gunshot. Angie crept along, pushing down the occasional foggy memory of that fateful night as they surfaced. _No, don't you let him in again. We have work to do._

The door from the cellar led into the kitchen. All was dark; it was another room Angie didn't remember ever having been in.

_Guess it was straight from the living room to the bedroom, huh, sweetie? _

She took a terse breath, willing that voice to stop its ironic crooning. Crane himself had paused with his back to her, listening. Presently the stillness was broken by the briefest of shuffles from the second floor; Angie was reminded of the noise she'd heard earlier in the evening, when Jane had slipped silently into the backyard. That had come from upstairs, hadn't it? Had Jonnie been up there, in that room the whole time?

"I guess we know where dear Mr. Cameron is," Crane said, looking upward.

_Jane could be up there,_ Angie thought. She kept that possibility to herself.

"What should we do?" she said instead.

"Wait," he offered. "He could come down anytime. Of course, he could not. He could very well be otherwise engaged. Is there something he could be doing that you'd like to interrupt?"

Angie's gaze slipped from the ceiling to rest on Crane. He was looking at her with the barest hint of amusement; his blue eyes were dimmed somewhat in the low light, but they still seemed to glow. She watched him, waited for further sign of this cruelty she'd been so recently introduced to. The glimmer of sadism vanished eventually, and Angie realized that he probably had an idea of where Jane was being kept.

"Upstairs?" she asked, as the glow inside her died.

Crane smiled. Angie suddenly wondered why he'd bothered to put the Scarecrow mask on in the first place if he was going to take it off again so soon. She saw no sign of it on him; presumably he'd hidden it back inside his jacket.

_A man could hide a lot in there, apparently. _

"We just came from upstairs, Angel," he said. Instead he moved to the living room, where the lights still hummed with a golden glow. She followed him, watching him make himself comfortable on the couch Jane had occupied hours ago. "We'll wait here." Another stealthy pause as his smile surfaced wickedly. "Surely he won't be too long."

Angie stared at him, biting her tongue, wondering just what he had become or if he had ever been anything different. She took no seat as she waited with him, waited for the noise to come again or for Daniel to take her by surprise once more. Crane sat contentedly, looking around the room with vague interest; the ticking of an unseen clock was the only sound for some time. Angie paced the room, eventually coming to rest at the mantle, where Daniel had stood speaking to her at the evening's beginning.

Finally, a muffled footfall. Angie straightened, tense. She looked at Crane; still relaxed, he gave no sign of having heard it.

"What will we do if he comes here?" she asked, hushed.

"I have a tentative plan of action."

Again, the faintest step came from above; and again, Crane appeared oblivious.

"Am I allowed to know this plan?" Angie said.

Crane's cool blue gaze finally came to her. "Not yet."

Was this the sound of Daniel sneaking? Trying to evade them – knowing about the passage from the guest bedroom, formerly his bedroom, to the cellar? Thinking of that fact, Angie realized how unlikely it would be for Daniel _not_ to know. She remembered being in that room, the very room Crane had taken her from not long ago. That was the bed she'd been dropped on in her drugged haze, years past…

_I never thought that when it happened I'd be wishing for it to stop_

The memory was surfacing, she could feel it; the very specific closeness, the smell of him, the things he'd said to placate her…

"_I'm a doctor, Angie," Daniel had said. "I know how to do it without hurting you."_

"When were you there?" She croaked the question out, pushing the memory down for just a little longer. Crane looked up at her in surprise.

"When was I where?" he asked.

Angie forced her gaze to meet his; there was genuine puzzlement there. He had not planted this question and waited for her to ask it so he could deliver another cold and cruel jab. "In the bedroom upstairs. I heard you earlier, Jane said she saw you somewhere…or something. But you were there, right? Before I was."

Now understanding, though still vague, lit his eyes. "Ah, the bedroom." He smiled now, and it was like her discomfort was a gift to him. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. "Where it all began? I was there, I admit. I have to know my patients, Angel. I crept in while you ran out to find Jane; I wanted to see where he held you, where you waited drugged as he took off his clothes. What you saw while you waited for him to finish…" he stopped to smile again. "If you remember that. I know it was all too clear for a while." Finally, finally his icy smile slipped, and Angie saw a trace of that imaginary kind man she'd loved, albeit foolishly. "We'll get him, Angie. He won't survive the night."

_Is that comforting, sweetie? I hope so, because once that drink-drugging rapist is 'taken care of', you'll have a very different monster to deal with, won't you? _

_The Scarecrow?_

_Are you ready, Angie?_

"Yes," she breathed. Crane's eyes snapped to hers, quizzical. She repeated herself. "Yes."

_I'm ready._

_

* * *

_  
A/N:

Sorry for the long delay, folks. Thanks for reading, and I'll try to be more vigilant on this. I've been missing Angie's smart mouth and Jane's…well, bitey one for some time. Hope you liked it, more to come, I promise.

- nH


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

_**My Sweetest Friend**_

_Who goes first? Daniel or Crane? _

Who would attack first? If Angie was lucky, they would kill each other off; of course, she hadn't been lucky so far regarding either man, so that was unlikely. Could she do it, could she cause them harm? Both were sociopaths, and both had once been loved by her; this made both unimaginably dangerous. Angie watched Crane sit on the couch, appearing benign as he either ignored the subtle sounds from upstairs or miraculously didn't hear them. His face, so structured, so beautifully androgynous; as she studied him closely in the relative light for the first time that evening, Angie saw another mark on that pale skin, something aside from the strange puncture on his cheek. His lower lip, always full, was also bruised, darkened with blood.

"What happened to your lip?" The question left her before she had a chance to think of rephrasing it. She was beginning to get the idea that perhaps straightforward honesty was not always the best policy.

Crane unconsciously stuck his tongue out to tentatively touch the wound. "Love," he said at first. Then: "No…not love, exactly. Love is unsure, an immature distraction from common sense." He smiled at Angie, gingerly, she noted. "I'm sure you've come to learn this yourself, Angel."

She forced a small laugh out of bitterness. _He doesn't know the half of it, does he?_

"So," she continued, "if it wasn't love, what was it?"

Crane's eyes lost their sharpness for a moment. "Jane," he murmured.

_Oh, the Biter. You should have known. _

A kiss gone wrong? Angie tried to suppress a smile.

A crash from upstairs wiped the smirk from her face. Surely Crane would have heard that.

"Finally something tangible," he said, again in a murmur. "I wonder why young ears such as yours would not have heard all those other shuffling steps, hmm? Perhaps you should have that looked at."

Angie ignored that cruel smile as she started toward the stairs; Crane stepped into her path, grasping her arm firmly above the elbow.

"You're not going up there."

He'd never put his hands on her before; not that she could remember, at any rate. The only dubious memory of real contact between them had been her forcing herself on him. The feeling now was not pleasant, and Angie's patience with forceful men was growing thin. She yanked her arm from his grip.

"I am," she replied, with more strength than she felt. "I'm not going to leave Jane to the _psychopaths-"_ she spat the word with a venom that Crane could not miss – "anymore."

Watching her with less shock than wary tolerance, he hung back for a moment. Angie turned on her heel, marching for the stairs; determined on the outside, she inwardly cowered.

Now she was met with silence, and in the wake of such noise it was terrible. She came to a stop at the bottom of the staircase, listening upward for an indication of Daniel or Jane. There was none; behind her, she heard Crane drift to stand at her elbow, gazing up into the blackness with her.

"What do you hope to accomplish, Angel?" he said. "Daniel can't be stopped, you know that. We'll have to wait – wait for him."

"Wait for him to finish?" Angie said, rounding on him. "What kind of a doctor would want that? What is it about this that you don't want to change – you _want _him to hurt Jane like he hurt me? You want him to finish what you couldn't?"

There was an eerie moment of stillness between them when time stopped and her heart beat harder with the realization of what she'd just done. He stood still, eyes like icicles for that second; then, the ice exploded.

His arms shot out, knocking her back onto the stairs. He moved toward her, menacing and silent for the moment; she held her ground as best she could. Her tailbone throbbed from the impact.

Reaching out to her, Crane leaned down into her breathing room. "Angel, I've worked very hard to get Jane to this point. My efforts with you appear to have been undone tonight, but we'll worry about that later. For now, I would like to preserve what I've done with Jane, and that means staying out of her immersion. She and Daniel are doing some very important work."

Angie's features twisted with disgust; she couldn't help herself. Pushing herself to her feet, she slapped Crane's hands away from her before he could restrain her. _You're a monster. _For a frightening moment, she couldn't tell if she'd thought it or said it out loud.

"I'm going to stop him," she said, "one way or another."

She turned and ran up the stairs, pounded her heart into that blackness where silence and shadows could hide anything, could hide Daniel, could hide his crimes. Vaguely, from a place she didn't want to care about anymore, she heard her beloved Jonnie call for her to stop; but she _didn't _care about him, and that was a freedom she didn't have time to consider at the moment. She ran up the stairs, knowing that in escaping one villain, she was flying straight into the web of another.

* * *

_A/N: once again, folks, sorry I've taken so long with this. Things got backed up for a while, but again, I will try to keep the updates coming more frequently. Thanks for reading! _

_- nH_


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

_**Everyone I Know…**_

_Watch out, baby – I'll bet dear old Danny can hear you comin'_

Angie stopped immediately at the top of the stairs. The dark hall opened before her in measurements she didn't remember well enough to comfortably walk. Perhaps Daniel had heard her; no sound came from any direction, no footfalls, no whispers. No muffled screams.

From the blackness behind and below her a floorboard creaked, cautiously. Crane was following her, after all. Swiftly Angie stepped away from the top of the stairway, hand out to touch the wall. The old house was full of old noises, and her own feet made small sounds; crouching down, she waited with bated breath for either man to come out of hiding, praying that neither could hear her heart pumping the fear and adrenaline through her veins. The seconds ticked away in the dark, Angie's sightlessness making time seem to stretch beyond the possible. Eventually the floorboards under Crane's feet complained again, and Angie's wide open pupils caught sight of his small form emerging from the thicker shadows onto the landing. He halted there, listening intently, just as she did.

Now she was in a fix; the Scarecrow right in front of her, and Daniel also close, but invisible to both she and Crane. Any movement she could make would damn her; she was stuck until one of her enemies either slipped up or stumbled upon her, hiding in the dark. Crane stood still as a statue. Angie closed her eyes, and called on God to hide her from the Scarecrow's sight.

A noise behind the very wall she cowered next to startled both she and Crane. He looked in her direction, alarmingly close, and Angie bit her tongue to keep from gasping. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she saw the edge of a doorway very near to her position; looking back at Crane, she watched as he started toward the sound, hands outstretched, making as little sound as a bird would perched on a branch. She fought the impulse to scamper away. Crane edged closer, somehow unaware of her proximity.

Clinging to the wall, Angie heard another unidentifiable sound from the other side; Jane? Crane was blundering closer to the sound with every blind step; she couldn't let him get to the girl first, no matter how frightened she was. But what could she do? She had no weapon, no handy vase to shatter over his head as in the movies. Any noise would draw Daniel to her as well; but, as Crane inched ever closer to the source of his interest, Angie saw no choice other than the insane. He turned away from her for a moment; Angie stood swiftly, stepping next to him with almost no sound. Alas, a floorboard gave her away, and he turned at the last second to face her. She could waste no time; with as much energy as she could muster, she swung a punch into that pretty face.

Their efforts at silence were spoiled then, as Crane took the hit with a surprised grunt. Angie took advantage of his shock, shoving him back toward the stairs. Before they quite made it that far, he regained his senses and reached out to grasp her shoulders.

"Angie," he snarled. "What are you doing? I am hardly the enemy here-"

"You're hardly a friend," she countered, making as much noise as she dared. Something told her, though, that the jig was up; Daniel would have to be deaf not to hear this. "You're not getting near Jane again," she promised, attempting to twist out of his grasp.

The creak of an old door's hinge stopped them both in their arguments. Angie was hardly surprised that Daniel would have heard; she couldn't expect to hide from a man in his own house. To look in the direction of the noise would be to turn away from Crane, though, and Angie was not prepared to do that just yet.

The doctor appeared to have more clichéd tactics than Angie had expected; he looked over her shoulder with an expression of nearly comical surprise. Angie refused to pander to this infantile trick.

"Angel, do you know who this is?" he asked her, eyes unmoving from their target behind her.

"Daniel, I assume," she hissed. She didn't know what she was going to do, but to trust Crane at this point would be unwise, to say the least.

"Daniel?" A watery female voice stunned Angie out of her grip on Crane's straightjacket. She turned to see a petite blond woman wandering from the darkened doorway to the room Angie had just cowered outside of. "Danny, is that you out here?"

_Mrs. Dr. Cameron, I presume?_

_

* * *

_

_**A/N: So sorry for my extended absence – some things have been going on in my real life, but I hope to get back to regular writing now. This chapter is a bit short; I believe the events unfold neater in this way. The next chapter will be up in a few days, barring disaster. There are many things left for Angie to say. Thank-you all for staying with me, those of you who have had the patience, and thanks to Royalty09 for setting me back on track when I was lost in the plot, so to speak!  
**_

_**-nH**_


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

**…****_Goes Away in the End_**

The woman looked as if she had just risen from a long sleep, and was still not quite conscious. Her hair was bedraggled, her clothing pale and rumpled. She moved hesitantly, uncertain, as if the solid feeling of the floor and walls were surprising to her.

"Well, now, we thought she was dead, didn't we?" Crane whispered to Angie.

Taking another shambling step toward them, the woman spoke to Angie. "Have you seen my husband? He should be here…"

Stepping closer still, the woman's bleary eyes widened briefly at the sight of Angie's face.

"Oh," she mumbled. "Oh, you're her, aren't you? You're that girl…the one who ruined Danny's career…"

Angie stepped back, shocked silent. Crane, momentarily forgotten, moved between the two.

"Do you know your husband, Mrs. Cameron?" he asked, to Angie's surprise. "Do you know what he did?"

Swaying on her feet like a drunk, the woman fixed her unsteady eyes on Crane. "Yeah, I guess I do. Took his pictures of her, kept them in a little box out where he thought I wouldn't find them. Pieces of her outfits, too…" Dropping her gaze, she laughed without mirth. "I know it wasn't right, I told him so myself. She's just a kid. Messing with her like that…he didn't like me to talk about her, after. I don't see him too much anymore."

"You knew?" Angie said in disbelief. Crane lifted a hand, motioning for silence. The woman answered her regardless.

"Not until after, I didn't. After you came storming back here with your accusations, I remembered hearing him talk about you a little too often. I looked in that place where I knew he kept his little toys, his magazines, and I found your stuff. Some stuff I was sure you'd be missing…then I believed you. I know we never met. Danny wouldn't allow it. I don't think this is right, either...I'm sorry about what happened to you, honey. He couldn't help it, he never could."

"Do you know where Danny is now?" Crane asked before Angie could protest. To her relief, the woman merely shrugged. Angie moved to peer into the room she'd just exited. Pale light shone from an unseen window, illuminating an untidy bed. On the nightstand next to it a lamp lay on its side, bulb and ceramic base shattered. Angie felt sick.

"He leaves me to my sleep, most days," the woman said. "I don't know where he goes. He's been very unhappy since you left him, hon."

"And where does Danny keep his secret things?" Crane pressed.

"Jonnie," Angie hissed, reverting to her pet name despite herself. He ignored her.

The woman's eyes swept long over the black corridor, so long she seemed not to have noticed the question. Angie wondered how long she'd been like this, how much of her life was spent in the dark.

"Oh," she said finally. "The attic, usually. That's the place I'm not allowed to go in…his private place."

Angie could almost hear Crane's smirk.

"I'm not going there," she said.

He turned to her, inquisitive look in his blue eyes. "Oh?" he said. "What about Jane? She may be there, Angie. Don't you want to retrieve her from her treatment? Save her from the big bad doctor?"

"You're both monsters," she said. "I'm going to get her out of this, _Doctor_. You won't stop me."

"Yes, I will," he said with a confidence that very nearly shook her. "You both need discipline."

"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Cameron's voice was faint, confused. It was almost as if she were seeing them there for the first time.

Seeing an opportunity, Angie took the initiative. "We're looking for a friend of mine," she said. "She's about my height, blond hair, wearing the same clothes. Have you seen anyone around here?"

After another long pause, she gave another fruitless answer. "No," she murmured. "Haven't even seen my husband. Have you?" she asked, brightening as she turned to them. "He's a doctor, you know. A very good surgeon."

"I'll bet he is," Crane said indulgently.

Angie took a step back into the shadows, not wishing to be re-recognized. "No, we haven't seen anyone else."

"But we know where to start," Crane said happily.

Angie waited tensely to see if Mrs. Cameron would remember her face all over again; to her relief, she turned lazily back to her torn-apart room.

"Well, I'd best be going, then," she said in her tired voice. Turning back for a moment, she looked at Angie with an expression that made her wonder if the woman hadn't recollected her after all. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Angie felt Crane's eyes bore into her, after looking between her and Mrs. Cameron for a moment. Steeling herself against the chill his attention brought, she nodded her thanks.

"I hope you do too," she said.

The woman turned silently back to her darkened entrance, closing the door behind her as she disappeared. It was a surreal feeling, watching her fade back into the nothing she'd come from; Angie could waste no time, though. She immediately stepped back quietly, hoping to slip away from Crane as he watched the door swing shut.

No such luck; he turned back to see Angie slinking away. With disquieting quickness he was at her side, again grasping her arm with his iron grip.

"We have business here," he hissed into her ear. "I believe we are headed for the attic, Angel."

Tensely, enraged inside, Angie nodded. She felt as if she would crack soon, burst into a million tiny shards if this didn't end.

_He's an animal, _she thought.

_Crane, or Daniel? _she answered herself.

_Both of them, all of them. You know we can't trust them at all anymore, don't you baby?_

Angie couldn't tell if this thought was her own, or one of the rampant ones placed there by the explosions in her past. Things were getting worse, inside and out.

"I think we've found the attic," Crane whispered. A long string hung down from the ceiling, where Angie could see the outline of a trap door; one edge cast a deeper shadow, as if the hidden stairs were waiting to descend. "Ready to embrace your past, Angel?"

She made no answer; the answer was no, but she couldn't say it. She couldn't admit defeat to this man forcing her up the stairs, forcing her to hand him the object of his sadistic affection. As if underwater, she reached up and grasped the thin rope. The stairs swung down without a sound; it looked like something in the house was well-oiled, at least.

"You first, my love," Crane breathed. His every move brought him closer to her, and made her wonder if it was merely discomfort that attracted him. Did he love seeing pain that much? His hands found her waist, directing her up the stairs in no uncertain terms.

Now she was pushed into darkness, not for the first time that night; plunging into the unknown, about to discover the ways the present would connect to her past. She hoped Daniel wasn't up there. She hoped, in a way, that Jane was. If she was alone, it would give her a chance to fight Crane, at least. At this point, Angie feared that random chance was all they had left.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

**_And You Can Have It All..._**

The space around her was dark as Angie pulled herself up through the trapdoor. It surprised her; had she been expecting candles and mirrors? So far, this looked like anyone's attic.

"What do you see?" Crane's voice whispered up from below.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing yet."

"Go on," he urged, giving her calves a push.

Irritated, Angie continued up through the opening, crawling cautiously on the dry wooden floor. The winds howled up here, as if she were in a box in the middle of a hurricane. Faint orange light filtered in through the tiny round window set in the far wall.

She was alone, if only for a second; Angie took the opportunity to breathe, to rest her spinning mind and to try to drag order back into her riotous thoughts. She would never get better with Crane, and she would never escape him like this. It was as simple as that. Escape this house, or die in captivity. Escape, and take Jane with her.

Crane was hissing something up to her, but she made no effort to hear him through the storm. She swept her hands about and found the dangling string attached to what she assumed would be the light; pulling it, she held her breath with every little click bringing her closer to revelation. When the light came, it exploded across her vision in a painful flash. After so long spent in the dark, sudden illumination can hurt; if the evening had taught her anything, it was this.

Her eyelids parted in slivers, and gradually vision faded in. The hasty peace she'd grasped at in Crane's momentary absence was fleeing at the sight of this; she had found Danny's secret place after all. Far from the romantic candle-lit altars seen in the movies, this was pure dirt and seediness. Angie could only thank God that the Camerons didn't have children. There were indeed photographs of her; some were official ID pictures, a few legitimate snapshots. The truly unsettling ones were the candid shots, though not the kind taken with a zoom lens at a distance. No, these were quite close, as she lay sleeping in Daniel's bed, in a drug-induced haze. He _had_ kept some souvenirs of that night, it would seem.

Angie pressed her eyes closed again, suppressing the urge to vomit. Her head had gone back to spinning at this. She blinked, hoping to dispel some of the pain, only succeeding in clearing her vision for further discovery. Among the papers and photographs littering the crate serving as a desk, scraps of fabric lay scattered. She ventured closer, despite the fear of acknowledgment, knowing what she'd find. Her hands reached out, fingers found the cloth, drawing back again as if scalded. It came to her in a flash; he had returned her that night without a particular article of clothing, a crucial unmentionable. This time she lost the battle; her stomach heaved, and her vomit spewed out over the dusty floorboards. She did her best to keep quiet. No need for Crane to see another weakness to exploit. She swore she saw steam rise from the sickly puddle in front of her; the coldness of the room startled her, now that she was paying attention. This was a cold, claustrophobic place. This place was like a tomb.

"Angel?" she heard Crane hiss. "What did you find?"

Angie chose to ignore him for the moment. This gruesome sex altar was not something she was in a mood to explain to another sociopath. Forcing her eyes away from the discovery, she slid across the floor as silently as possible, searching for signs of recent life. She counted herself lucky that Daniel's habits weren't more repugnant; she could at least be sure she wasn't about to crawl into any human puddles that she didn't put there.

"Angel!" Crane's voice was far more audible now. Angie jumped, worried that he might be heading up to meet her.

"What?" she hissed down at him.

"What do you see?"

Naturally, her first instinct was to lie. He did deserve it. "Dust, cobwebs, floorboards. Give me a minute, I'm going to check around to make sure, but I don't think there's anything here."

The silence that greeted her seemed uncertain, untrusting. Still, she felt oddly protective of her discovery; it would be a further insult, a greater slice into her very core if Dr. Crane saw this. It would become a weakness, and she an exploited child, used and used again by the man a monster had rescued her from.

"Alright, Angel," she finally heard Crane say. It seemed a reluctant grant of only a few minutes.

To placate the man's listening ears, Angie did drag herself across the floor, past the trapdoor she had entered through. As she ventured into the shadows of the attic, a veil of warmer air drifted across her fingers. It was like a breath from an invisible pair of lungs; Angie froze, believing for a moment that that was exactly what it was, a breath of air from Daniel or some other nightmare, hiding right in front of her. In her stillness, she heard a faint voice.

It sounded like a prayer; soft and disconnected, plaintive but well-rehearsed. She gasped as she recognized the source of that voice. Pressing her ear to the boards beneath her, she caught bits and pieces of Jane begging someone, anyone, to deliver her from evil. Quietly, as quietly as she could manage, she pulled herself further into the darkness, away from the bare bulb hanging from the rafters. Soon she was blind, but her hands found their way into a rectangular frame with a small circular hole – another trapdoor. Before she could panic with excitement, she waited; waited to see if Jane was alone. For a minute Jane's voice went on, by herself, and no movement seemed to accompany her. Angie wished she could draw up Crane's ladder without him stopping her. As it was, she could only be very careful when she pushed down the planks in front of her.

There was a mild creak as the collapsing ladder unfolded down into the lighter blackness beneath her; Angie waited for an agonized moment before moving to descend. Slowly, her breath ragged and explosive to her ears, she stepped down and down, and when she was at the bottom, she pushed the ladder back up as softly as she could. The smell of linens met her nose; as she'd suspected, she was in a closet. Outside the slatted door, Jane awaited, still praying softly, giving no sign of having heard Angie arrive. In that last moment, Angie hesitated again, afraid beyond reason that Daniel was in that room with her. Jane, though, was praying coherently, and for that Angie was grateful. At least Crane's toxins had spared some of her sanity. She was going to save her tonight, before it was too late. Angie would save Jane, or die trying.

_**A/N: Sorry that took so long. If anyone's still with me, I'd really appreciate a review. Thanks for reading!**_

- **_nH_**


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

_**Just Like the End of the World**_

_There's no easy way to do this, sweetheart._

Jane would be startled, to say the least. All the possible reactions spilled across Angie's mind, but she had little choice; as quietly as she could, she pushed open the slatted doors to greet her friend after what felt like years.

Jane didn't turn. Or react at all, really. Eyes darting around the room, Angie stepped forward. They were alone. Thank God.

"Jane?" she whispered.

Now those gray eyes opened, that prayer stopped mid-sentence. Angie's finger flew to her lips before Jane could make another sound.

"Where's Daniel?" she asked, very near to silence.

Jane shook her head, glancing now to the door. Angie moved to her side, kneeling beside her so she didn't have to speak at a normal volume.

"Jane, I have bad news. Jonnie's here."

Gray eyes widened, but Angie hushed her with a hand on her arm. "He thinks I'm in the attic, looking for you. Honey, we've got to get out of here. Daniel's not a friend, not like I thought…I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I brought us to this place. I don't know where we can go, but we can't stay here."

A moment tensely slipped past in silence. Eerie, Angie thought, that neither Daniel nor Crane were making any noise, wherever they were. "Do you have any idea where Daniel went?" she asked. Jane shook her head.

"Alright," Angie said. "Let's get out of this room, for starters."

The girls rose, Jane still touching Angie's sleeve as they crept toward the door. Angie would be glad when they were back on the street with the regular madmen; all this tip-toeing around predators in the dark was bad for her heart.

"Okay," Angie whispered as they hovered, hearts pounding. "When we get out there, head straight for the front door. Just be quiet, and don't panic if we hear anything. Just…keep going. I think that's the best thing to do. Alright?"

Angie couldn't see much of Jane's face in the dark, but the girl nodded; she had that hesitance Angie had never seen before that last appointment with Crane. She cursed herself for ever having been infatuated with him; a wave of gratefulness followed as she realized that things could have been so much worse. If anything like that had happened to her – if she'd ended up a jumpy zombie like so many others in Arkham – Jane would have had no one to come between her and the Scarecrow. And, of course, Angie had never looked forward to a life of insane terror for herself either. Lucky, lucky stars.

She cracked open the door, some part of her just beginning to realize that all that careful planning would probably not help her much if Daniel was around anywhere. It was, after all, his house. Add Crane – Scarecrow – to the mix, and hope might be hard to come by. She decided not to think about her odds anymore.

The hallway was dark, just as she had left it. Jane followed close behind as they kept to the walls, avoiding possible creaks as best they could.

_This is just like the asylum, huh? And like that night you got up, groggy…half-naked…and escaped to your Momma_

_Isn't it?_

"I swear to God, if you don't shut up, I'll sew my mouth closed," Angie hissed at the voice in her head. Jane didn't bat an eye, poor thing. Angie took her hand, hoping that maybe the contact would keep her old self from coming through.

Although the house seemed endless in the dark, Angie did somehow find herself drawn to the staircase; the power of unconscious memory, maybe. It was exactly what had drawn her to this house in the first place, in fact. If there had been _one little note _in her file about a possible rape in her past, just one detail to cast that doubt on her life, she would have shown more caution in throwing herself back into the arms of an apparent old flame. _Because once you've been violated, no one can be trusted, can they Angel? _This time she clenched her jaw and moved on without acknowledging those thoughts. Sometimes, you can't even trust yourself.

Now the stairs descended before them, that long dark tunnel into nothing; Angie hoped those predators were far behind them. She knew it was some magical fantasy land where Crane was still waiting like an idiot at the bottom of the attic stairs and Daniel was taking a nap, but if she thought about the likeliness that her Jonnie was a step ahead of them, _again_, as he always had been, she'd quit right there. Glancing back at Jane, she saw her gray eyes fixed on the shadows before them. How the girl was fighting off that crazy fear dust was beyond Angie, but she was glad Jane had that mysterious coping mechanism. She doubted she'd do better under similar circumstances; now, while Jane was quiet and not trembling or muttering strange phrases, would be the time to get a move on. Angie squeezed her friend's hand, and started the descent.

"Wait," Jane said.

Angie halted. "Hush," she breathed. "You have to be quiet, Jane. Why wait?"

Even in the dark, Angie could see that Jane didn't look so good. Her breathing had intensified, her brow was furrowed; she was gripping Angie's hand like something inhuman, and she could feel the tremors trying to break free. _Spoke too soon, hon._ That voice inside sounded gleeful, and if it had a body Angie would have hurt it then.

"I can feel him here," Jane said, making a game effort to be quiet and failing in her distress.

Angie didn't know if it was true or not, but letting Jane believe the worst was not an option. "He's not here. Let's go before he finds us, okay?"

"You should listen to your friend," Crane – as the monster - said. "She knows what she's talking about."

Out of the darkness behind Jane came two canvas-clad arms and one burlap sack; the twisted face of a Scarecrow. He moved faster than Angie would have believed possible, tearing Jane away from her before she could move. The sudden emptiness in her hand as Jane was snatched away felt just like the end of the world.

* * *

_As always, I apologize for the ridiculously long absence. Angie and Jane are back from their year-long vacation now and are ready to do battle with Gotham again. Hope you enjoy! _

_Stay tuned for another Gotham tale after this, starring someone impossible to ignore. The end is nigh!_

-nH


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

_**I Will Let You Down**_

If Angie had had time to react, she would have done anything to save Jane. She would have clawed Jonnie's eyes out, she would have thrown him down the stairs. As it was, she barely had time to blink in the darkness before Jane was torn away; it was only a few feet, but it felt like miles and miles. Jane must have felt the same way. Her scream sailed out of her mouth in a red, keening ribbon of terror.

The silence shattered, Angie charged forward, trying to at least keep pace with the rapidly disappearing pair. Noise didn't matter, now. The most dangerous of monsters already had them.

"Angel," Scarecrow said sternly, halting his retreat. "Stop! The last thing we need is another overreaction."

"Let her go," Angie demanded. She was impressed by the strength in her voice; in reality, she was feeling more hopeless all the time.

"Why? So you can lead her right to the man who raped you?"

She could see now how easily the doctor changed his tune; now that Jane's 'immersion' was complete, she was a useful piece of clay again. Angie wondered what new shapes he would try to mold her into. "I thought that was what you wanted, Jonnie. He hasn't seen her yet. Don't you want her therapy to continue?"

The Scarecrow thought that amusing, at least; rumbling laughter came through the voice filter on his mask. "_I'm_ her therapist. Actually, I'm yours too." The voice tried to soften at the last minute, but the mask made it impossible. Crane reached up to remove it. Human again, he went on. "I'll help you get past this night. You've been through worse, Angel. Once we're out of here, I'll do everything I can to bring you peace again. I promise."

A promise from Crane was a dubious gift, but the fact that he was offering it at all got bells ringing in Angie's head. Jane had gone strangely still, and Angie now noticed that the girl's eyes were locked on her own. Angie gave her a nod, no matter what it might mean to her, what she might be thinking. Time was running out.

"You promise-" Angie started in that playful way she had; she was cut short by an explosion of fists and legs from Jane.

All the girl's training seemed to be manifesting at once; now that the mask was off, Angie could see the shock on Crane's face as he took hit after hit from the teenager he'd just been restraining. Angie had never seen anything like it, and the sounds coming out of her…Jane was like a young woman possessed. She hit Crane with a left jab, and followed before he could even think of recovering with a devastating kick to the jaw. He grunted, but managed to stay upright; Angie was almost glad. She didn't know what Jane would do if she got him on the ground, and watching a man get beaten to death – whether he deserved some kind of punishment or not – was not something she was eager to experience. Jane was capable, at least physically. Mentally, she was currently out of her freaking mind. Finally, Crane took one smash too many, and went down on one knee; all the times Angie had dreamed of this, she'd never thought it would be in subjugation. Jane circled him mercilessly and took his throat in a chokehold.

"Jane," Angie managed; it was not a plea for peace, just an exclamation of shock. She laughed a brittle laugh. Sensing approval, Jane tightened her hold on Crane's neck; now he was the one struggling to get free. Angie liked the way it looked on him.

The sound of a heavy bottle hitting the carpet startled them all. Angie turned to find Daniel behind her, flabbergasted and drunk, his whiskey teetering dangerously close to overturning. Cigarette smoke curled around his head as he exhaled, the glowing red point between his fingers as forgotten as the tipping bottle at his feet. Reflexively, Angie bent to pick it up. She'd never liked the smell of alcohol, especially after that long-forgotten night; another sensory memory of Daniel on top of her, breathing liquor into her face, was the last thing she needed. As soon as she made the move, she realized how little sense keeping things clean made in her current situation.

In this, Daniel saw an opportunity. As Angie stooped, he brought his knee up; when it connected with her face, Angie saw stars. Not long after, the pain flooded in as the blood poured out. She barely noticed the hand in her hair, drunk and clammy and tangling.

"Get that one," she heard him say, presumably to Crane. She wasn't really surprised to hear that despite all the alcohol in his blood, he sounded completely sober. "Heard her screaming all the way downstairs. Who the hell are you, anyway?"

Through a red haze, she saw Jane release Jonnie and move tentatively back to the wall. She looked less wild now than she had all night. _Got it out of her system, I guess_, Angie thought. It was telling that Daniel put his trust in a strange man wearing a straightjacket at the same time that he pulled the hair of an unarmed young woman. She wondered how Crane felt about that; with the pain of her split lip or black eye or whatever he'd done – it all seemed to hurt equally – she couldn't see the doctor's face clearly.

"Daniel Cameron, I presume?" Crane said.

Daniel snorted. "No, that's me," he said facetiously. He may not have sounded like the classic drunk, but the liquor sure made a difference in his attitude. "Who are you?"

Crane moved toward him, seeming to forget about his favourite patient as she hung back behind him. His hand strayed under the straightjacket; Angie could tell when he took something from a pocket underneath, but she doubted if the drunken Daniel realized it. Now she smelled the whiskey and tobacco on him. _And he's a cancer doctor, baby! _She felt like she was drowning in it, and fought to keep the contents of her stomach down.

"I'm Angel's doctor," he said, sounding completely rational. Pity for Daniel he didn't notice those long, flapping sleeves and those heavy metal buckles. "Jonathan Crane. You, however, can call me Scarecrow."

With a glance to Angel's eyes, he stepped forward and seemed to gesture vaguely to Daniel's face. Angie moved without thinking; she'd seen what that fine mist had done to Jane, and had heard the rumors in Arkham of Jonnie getting a taste of his own medicine. Neither of them had escaped with sanity intact. She lurched forward recklessly, adding the pain of losing a handful of hair to her growing list of concerns. The powder was already having an effect on Daniel; as she hit the floor, knocking the whiskey bottle on its side, she heard him scream.

"Angel," Crane barked. He'd backpedaled as soon as he'd fired his toxin, to avoid inhaling another lungful of madness; God knew where he'd hidden another can of that stuff from the cops in Arkham. Liquor gurgled out over Angie's hand, waking her from her fugue. She hadn't realized just how big that bottle really was. For some reason, the thought of him drinking himself to death while two young girls lay restrained upstairs made her unexpectedly, unimaginably angry.

She hoisted herself to her feet. Daniel hadn't moved yet, hadn't started the spasms and clawing and throat-rupturing screams. With a howl of rage for everything between them, Angie flew at him. Her nails raked his face; his hands flew up, one gurgling cry lost in his throat. His cigarette dangled, then brushed against her arm, burning her skin and falling to the ground. She barely felt it.

"Yes, Angel," she heard from somewhere behind her, but she wasn't really there anymore. She was in bed, paralyzed but still feeling everything this sociopathic coward was doing to her; to get the sick feeling out, she lashed out at him again. Now he screamed; in his state, he was powerless against her. She curled her fingers into vicious claws and dug them into his throat. Ripping and tugging and digging deeper, until blood oozed out over her nails and the look in his eyes changed from fear to terror and then to something different, something more primal, Angie kept going. Only that sound behind her brought her back; not the approval of the madman, the other sound. The whimpering of the young girl.

With a crack, she was back in the present. Daniel Cameron stood in front of her, too far under the influence of Dr. Crane's voodoo fear powder to try to stop the bleeding in his neck. Behind her stood the Scarecrow, without his mask, halfway between a man and a monster; Crane, Jonathan Crane. That man she'd thought she loved, just like this man before her. Further back, cowering against the wall, the best friend she'd ever had; Jane, poor Jane. Angie lifted her hands to her eyes, straining to see the blood in the dark. She was coated; Daniel was trying to scream, but somehow Angie had taken that from him. He collapsed to the floor.

Following him with her stunned gaze, Angie saw a faint glow radiating from the carpet. Just a small fire started by his cigarette, another dirty habit held by a dirty man. She moved to stamp it out; somehow his falling form had missed it. Before she could get that far, there was a _whoosh_ and a startling wave of heat bathed her legs. _The whiskey!_ That inner voice was definitely gleeful now; cackling like a madwoman, really. The tiny flames in the old carpet had reached the accelerating alcohol, and now there was yet another problem too big for her to solve.

Fingers caught her sleeve and pulled her back; he might have said her name, but she was too shocked by it all to notice. The fire was immense, so suddenly; Angie wondered if she'd blacked out for a minute while the flames grew. Then, in what might be irony, she did black out; the image of Daniel's not-quite-lifeless form bathed in fire while he still twitched overcame her senses, along with the choking black smoke and the smell of burning polyester shag.

_I always knew it would go this way_

_Because, Angel baby,_

_Everything burns in the end._

* * *

_A/N: Just another thanks to those still keeping up! It's coming really fast now, so, y'know...don't blink. We have new acquaintances to make, so stay tuned. I also enjoy reviews. And if you have the time, please check out my Sin City fic called "The Blood-Red Juice of the Pomegranate". I think it'll be worth your while, even if - like me - you're not a huge fan of Sin City. I am a mystery to myself sometimes. Hope you like what's to come for both Basin City and Gotham!  
_

-nH


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

_**Everything Burns…**_

_Try not to think about all you've lost_

_No good can come of that, hon._

Angie felt the heat slowly cooking her body, but her mind was elsewhere. Years ago…the first time she really, truly realized how little her mother cared for her.

The well-dressed woman bustled unconcerned through the Adlams' tailoring workshop, ignoring her daughter as she cried alone in the office. In Marie Adlam's experience, women who let themselves get into these…_situations_, these ugly morning-after regret parties, deserved all the discomfort with which they ended up. Angel was just another one of those. She was seventeen, not some femme fatale oozing lust from every pore; men don't flock to girls like Angie. They bide their time with them, and sometimes it leaves girls like this poor, plain, foolish teenager feeling bitter. But there was no chance Daniel Cameron had _raped _her daughter.

Daniel Cameron was a _doctor, _a _surgeon_, no less. Angel Adlam was a love-struck candy striper. Marie would not be wasting any of her valuable time on these groundless accusations.

If Angie had known her own mother would so coldly disregard her, she would not have wasted time volunteering at the hospital in the first place. Then she never would have met Daniel, who was so nice and handsome and helpful on her first shift that she looked forward to running into him every day after that. When he asked her out to the coffee shop on the corner one day, she was delighted. When he offered her a ride home in the rain after a few months of casual platonic encounters, she trusted him. She had no reason not to. He was, after all, a very successful surgeon.

When he drugged her drink and carried her into his bedroom, she was paralyzed with fear.

Then there were the odd, too-bright memories of the affair; the fictional, unlikely affair. Thirty-two year old doctors do have affairs with teenagers, sometimes, so that wasn't the strange thing about these thoughts in her head. For so long they felt real, and Angie had suddenly imagined she was a girl worthy of being wanted. She still loved Daniel Cameron, in this version of events. In this fairytale, he had made her feel beautiful for the first time in her life.

"Jane, please," someone shouted, choking back a coughing fit. "I need your help!"

It was a man, familiar somehow. Angie tried to sleep past the noise, but it was too hot to get any rest. She cracked open an eye, and quickly wished she hadn't.

Immediately, her eyeball was assaulted with heat. There is nothing like eyeball unpleasantness to bring one back to the present, particularly when the unpleasantness features fire. Strong hands hooked under her arms, dragging her back over the carpet, away from the burning mass in front of her. That smoke felt thick and oily; like blood, somehow.

"Daniel!" Angie had intended for it to be a shriek, but it came out a painful croak instead. She discovered to her dismay that drawing breath was incredibly difficult. Before her, a mound of something burned, _something_, now black and curling around the many edges. She knew what it was; as she was drawn back by those hands, everything became clear. She wailed, as best she could. She hated Daniel, but this…was not what she'd wanted.

"He's gone, Angie," he said in her ear. She turned to see blue eyes staring, very close, just like a human being. Those canvas arms wrapped around her, squeezing once and then hauling her to her feet. She choked on the black air, vaguely remembering something from grade school about crawling on the floor in a fire. If she could take a breath, she'd mention it to Jon.

"The stairs are out," he said. Angie could barely hear him over the sound of cracking wood. She looked for Jane, panicked, and he gestured to the window at the end of the hall. "We have to get out of here!"

"Where's Jane?" Angie shouted. He waved again to the window, and now Angie made out the shape of a girl, huddled in the corner. She started to her, stumbled, and was helped up again by Crane.

_Pulls through in a pinch, doesn't he?_

The window faced the street, which seemed unnaturally peaceful, considering the riot on the rest of the Narrows and the inferno building in the house. An oak tree stood tantalizingly close, but just far enough away to be dangerous. _But what's life without a little danger, Angel?_ They could break out the window and jump into the tree, if their guardian angels ever got around to starting their shifts for the night. So far, none of the three had been very well protected.

Jane stood when she saw Angie; the blood all over her hands and face suddenly came back to her, but it was too late to stop now. Jane's eyes widened; still, she didn't back away. Together, they looked to the window, and then to the small table against the wall. Small enough to throw for any of them, especially Jane. She moved to it, more decisive than Angie had seen her in a while. When she turned with it in her hands, Crane realized what she intended to do; howling a warning, he jumped to stop her, but it was too late. The table flew through the glass, and as it shattered a gush of fresh, cool air rushed in. It was a relief, for the split second it took for the new oxygen to reach the flames.

Then, pandemonium.

Fire, of course, eats oxygen. The open window was an escape route for the three misfits – really, what else could they be called? – and a stream of fuel for their impending doom. Angie realized too late that it would have been prudent to close themselves in another room before breaking a window to make their jump to safety. Now the fire was out of control, as if it weren't a few minutes ago. Their time was running out at a breakneck speed.

Crane looked out the window, canvas sleeve held over his mouth and nose; seeming satisfied, he took Jane by the arm and propelled her wordlessly to the ledge. She hesitated for a second and shook him off, looking to Angie; she nodded, and the girl hopped out, skidding down an old overhang to touch the outstretched oak branches overhead. Reaching up, she disappeared into the darkness of the tree. Now Angel and Crane looked at each other, wasting time on soundless goodbyes as the world burned down around them.

He was a monster, a young pretty monster; he was also the only person who ever believed her accusations against Daniel. He was the only person who had ever helped her, the only person who had ever cared for her without using her. Even if she had been the _one_ patient he'd never intentionally hurt, that counted for something, right? Maybe this made him human; she had to believe it did. Feeling that this was her last chance at contact with anyone – and feeling that somehow, after all he'd done, Crane was still a friend – Angie darted forward and embraced him. Stunned, he held her for a moment, close in the crushing heat; then he pushed her toward the jagged windowsill. She wondered if times like these were when true colours came through. If so, Crane just might be the man she'd thought he was before tonight.

The sound of splitting wood, ear-piercingly loud, rushed Crane to the window ledge behind her. Angie moved fast, faster than she should have; in her haste, she slipped on wet shingles, and slid in a bare moment too short to scream down the overhang and over the edge.

She heard Crane shout her name in the relatively quiet night air; Jane's voice followed in that moment of suspension, right before gravity kicks in and pulls a person all the way down.

* * *

_Just so you know how freakin' close we're getting...well, we're getting really freakin close. I'm amazed I'm getting even one review per chapter after all this time, so thanks to everyone who's reading and reviewing; hell, at this point, thanks to anyone who's even skimming the page looking for the Joker. To those, I say this: he will be making an appearance in the next one. That's right, Gotham can't get rid of me that easily. I doubt I'll be updating every day on that, but I'll try to be a bit more vigilant this time than I was for the majority of Heart of Glass. To display my gratitude, after the final chapter of Heart of Glass I will be including a preview of the next story, called **Razorblade Smile. **_

_Thank-you all again, and I hope to see you there!_

-nH


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

…_**Burns In the End**_

Angie descended for what seemed like hours, in a kind of nothing-time when all thought is erased and the only thing a person can do is _feel_. The air was cold, and wet; the rushing air pleasantly cooled her. The black branches of the oak tree pulled away from her rapidly, and the human shape nestled within them retreated just as fast. The sky above was purple with Gotham rain clouds. Then it all stopped.

The air was crushed out of her lungs as gravity pulled her into herself like a human accordion. Angie would have gasped if it had been possible. Then she would have screamed. The snapping noise that she felt and heard in her leg hit her a second after the impact; it didn't hurt, not right away. It felt cold, and gritty inside her calf and knee; then, building up faster than she could comprehend, came the pain.

It was immeasurable, and she sucked air into her lungs with a painful grating sound. Eyes glued shut, Angie had no desire to see what her now blazing leg looked like. From some other planet, she heard sneakered feet hit the ground, followed by another pair soon after. Some people were calling her name, and now hands were touching her arms, trying to hold her in place. She wanted to scream that she'd have to be crazy to try to move like this, but she suddenly realized she _was _rocking, and every movement made her shattered bone scrape against bone inside her. With a great effort, she put a stop to that.

"Angie," a man said. The concern sounded odd on him. She opened her eyes and saw blue oceans greet her. "Lie still." A pause, wondering what would be best. "Your leg is broken."

_Well, DUH! _

_Jesus H, of course it's broken, Doctor! _

"Shut up," she ground out between clenched teeth. Glancing back at Crane, she saw further concern pass over his features. "Not you," she said. He didn't look very relieved.

"Angie?" An uncertain young voice fluttered somewhere on the other side of her. Those other hands, the smaller ones, patted her shoulders. "Are you okay?"

"She'll be fine, Jane," Crane said, somehow reassuringly. In this moment, it was like nothing insane had ever happened between the three of them; he was a doctor, her leg was broken, her friend was worried about her. There were no experiments, no fear drugs, no rapes. No murders committed with bare hands. No houses burning down every horrible memory that had made her what she was; a killer.

And she had thought Crane mad.

Through the cold shock, when tears aren't supposed to fall, Angie's amber eyes did cry. "I…I did it. I kil-"

"No, Angel," Crane said sternly. Another cry of crackling wood split the air, and he hovered protectively over her, drawing Jane in with him. "He died in the fire he started when he got drunk and left his cigarette burning. You were lucky to escape, the two of you."

"Lucky," Jane echoed.

"Yes. Lucky. Angie didn't do anything wrong in there. Right?"

Gray eyes nodded. "Right…"

Angie caught a look in Crane's eye; something that glinted like pride, but stayed dark like that unfortunate interest he'd taken in Jane from the day the two had met. The burning house next to them was momentarily forgotten.

"Jonnie," she managed. "Don't, don't you…"

"I've never seen anyone recover from my toxin so well without the antidote," he said, ignoring her plea. He seemed to be talking to Jane, but his hand squeezed Angie's as he spoke.

"There's an antidote?" Angie said. Finally, some good news.

"Yes, of course. I wasn't about to risk being affected myself without having an exit strategy." He paused for a second, thinking of his trip from the edge of the Narrows back to Arkham. "Though the police seem to have one now themselves. God knows where they got it. It didn't come from me. Maybe the Bat-man…"

"Bat-man?" Angie asked, incredulous. "He's…real?"

"Don't get me started. He seems even to have science on his side." Crane scoffed at the idea of a man in disguise as a bat using the clear rationale of a scientist; it was ironic, considering his own circumstances. "Gotham is full of surprises."

"Jonnie, you have to give it to her."

He looked back to Angie with a sort of fulfilled expectation of disappointment. "Do I, Angie?"

"Jonnie. You're not a bad person. You don't want her to live the rest of her life-"

"I don't have it, I'm afraid." He chuckled dryly. "Thanks, though."

"I'm fine," Jane said then, startling Angie. She didn't sound fine, but she did sound…less unsteady. _She'll never be herself again, will she? _"What are we going to do?"

Bits of glowing ember were beginning to float down onto them, followed by unsettlingly large pieces of burning wood. The house, in its death throes, suddenly loomed overhead. It was as if it had disappeared for a minute, and then jumped angrily back into their conversation.

"We have to get away," Crane said. He looked at Angie's throbbing leg with a mixture of disdain and pity. "This won't be pleasant."

"Wait, what-" she started, before Crane scooped her up and held her to him; she felt her broken bones crunch. Through a smoke-blackened throat, she screamed.

"Sorry," he groaned; he wasn't the type to pick up young women and carry them around, that much was obvious. He stumbled as quickly as he could to the driveway, past the sedan, all the way to the sidewalk. Here, away from the baking heat, Angie realized how close they'd come to being crushed under a flaming house as they casually talked. Jane had followed, now standing uncertainly next to Angie as Crane, gasping for air, laid her down on the curb. Considering the effort it had taken him to get her here, he did it with surprising grace.

_Gotham is full of surprises_

"If you really want it," he said, panting just a bit, "get the antidote from the police."

Angie was still recovering from the intense pain of being moved, but she came back to herself at this. "What do you mean, if we really want it?" she exclaimed. He rose, testing the air.

"Jane is experiencing life through new eyes now," he said, glancing to the girl but having the decency not to stare. "I, for one, am interested to see what this yields."

She couldn't believe him. One minute he was rescuing them both from a house on fire – helping her cover a murder, for God's sake – and the next he was planning new experiments in psychosis. "I don't understand you," she breathed. The pain was rapidly depleting her energy. Crane saw this, and knelt next to her again.

"Save it for when you have the strength and we both have the time." He rose again, keeping a wary eye to the east; light began to streak the violet sky, and now Angie heard sirens wail. She guessed a heritage house in flames would be hard to miss, even tonight.

"Where are you going now?"

"I'm not going to tell you that, Angie."

Angie struggled to rise up on her elbows; Jane tentatively knelt to support her. The girl did seem better, somehow.

"I don't want to see you near Jane ever again," Angie said. With all they'd been through, the strength in her voice was impossible to ignore. Still, Crane hesitated.

"I will owe you one," Angie said, angry, wishing she could make him see himself the way she saw him.

"You'll owe me two, don't you think?" he said. She bit her tongue and nodded. Grudgingly – with another wild card stuck up his sleeve, she was sure – Crane nodded back.

"See you," Jane said quietly, gray eyes fixed on him.

"Not if your guardian angel can help it," he answered. "As you wish, Angie. Owe me _two._"

The sirens were closer now, close enough for Angie to know they were headed straight to them. Crane knew it too; without another word, he turned and fled into the retreating dark. Jane and Angie watched him go. When the sirens reached them, the only thing the paramedics found was a pair of young women in dirty jogging suits, injured and exhausted; frightened, but alive.

The End …………………….

* * *

_I'd like to thank everyone who stuck it out with me for so long! Your reviews kept me going, even if I needed extra-super long coffee breaks between chapters to get this done. In return, here is an excerpt from somewhere in the middle of my next story, Razorblade Smile._

_ This passage is a conversation between our girl Angie and the Joker; as it's from the middle, some things won't be immediately explained, so bear with me. For the purpose of everyone having a basic grasp of what's going on, I will spoil you by telling you that Angie has taken over her mother's failing tailoring business, and her only client wears a lot of purple and pays enough to single-handedly keep her rent paid and groceries stocked up. This is from their "getting to know you" phase. _

_I hope you enjoy!_

-nH

* * *

Bonus Preview of _Razorblade Smile_

They sat drinking in her kitchen, because she was obviously drowning her sorrows and he was fascinated with watching someone so familiar deteriorate. Also, he liked her. He thought she was pretty. Beautiful, actually, but he wouldn't tell her unless he wanted to frighten her.

"So…what's a, uh, _nice _girl like you doing drinking alone on a Saturday night?" he asked.

She smiled vaguely at the floor. She usually looked right at him; staring that sense of danger in the face, he supposed. She'd been doing it since the day he'd come to her, face free of makeup, looking like a nice normal guy with a razorblade smile who wanted to wear a purple three-piece suit. He hadn't wanted to scare her off so soon. Now she wasn't looking at him, and he was actually talking to her.

"Nothing else to do," she answered.

"And, why aren't you _afraid _of me?" he continued, ignoring that obvious cry for help. "No; no-never-mind, scratch that. We'll come back to it. Why are you still working for me, now that you know…what I do?"

Angie shrugged, the fabric of that thin white shirt lifting over round white shoulders, soft white flesh. Now she looked at him, amber eyes daring to make contact under black lashes. She gestured to the room around them. "The only reason I can afford both beer and food is you. Drink up."

"So it's all…about…the money?"

She continued to meet his gaze, more directly this time, but said nothing. He took another drink of yeasty alcohol and felt it seep into him. Truth be told, he didn't drink much. He couldn't afford to in his line of work, the Bat-man, Bat-_men­_ hanging around every corner, it would be stupid to dull those senses. It was mostly that, but also partly that man, that _fiend_…Joker didn't drink much, for more than one reason.

"It's not," he concluded. "Hasn't anybody warned you about, ah…_playing_ with – strangers?"

"We're not playing," she answered. "And I'm not…I don't have anyone. No one there to warn me, but I know. You don't have to tell me."

"Nothing to lose?"

"I guess not."

"No friends?" he asked. He waited a second to let the discomfort move in. "What about that James guy? How come you, hmm…never talk to him?"

Angie shifted in her seat. She didn't answer, did break their staring contest.

_I always win_, he thought. He leaned forward, half-feigning sheepishness. He pushed it past the appearance of normalcy because he didn't want her to know that he kind of did feel bad. "Bad thing to say on a first date, huh?" he said. "How, how's that guy you kidnapped in high school, no. No one wants to hear that. You probably don't want to tell me about it, either."

"Not really," she said. "I…"

"I think you scared him," the Joker said with that same fake-real awkwardness. "I think you scared him off."

"It would have scared you off."

"No," he said before she'd finished. "Not me. Takes _more_ to scare me off."

Angie took a breath, staring into her beer, coming to some new level of recklessness. It was so obvious, the way she straightened her shoulders and prepared to piss someone off; she was like an open book, like he'd known her his whole life. He wondered if she'd always been so easy to read. Could explain why her doctor threw her into Arkham; have a nice tidy place to keep her, watch her struggle under his therapy. Good for him, if he wanted to study her. She was complex, and a terrible liar, he'd bet.

"So, how'd you get those scars?" she asked. If this was her big move, he was disappointed.

"Well, I'll tell ya…"

"Was it your dad?" she continued, peeling the label off her brown bottle. "Because, sometimes you sound like him, I think. I think the only reason you'd ever sound like your dad and a monster is if your dad _was_ a monster, and he left a big mark on you."

Now she was silent, waiting for an answer, and the fairy tale about the bullies in elementary school with the box cutters died on his red lips. He attempted a smile, felt it start to falter and aimed for a snarl instead. He ended up with a short confused laugh. "Listen," he said. "I…" and he laughed again, hating this feeling he got so often when someone said something unexpected. He never let things spin out of control, _never_, and that relied on recovery from things like this. "How about this," he said, seriously, putting his bottle down and staring earnestly into her face. "You, you can ask me anything. _Anything _you want," he said, gesturing with gloved hands to their whole wide dirty world and every possible question in it. "Ask me anything, and maybe I'll answer, but if I don't _like-it-"_his dry voice spitting in staccato – "I get to hurt you. Just a little bit, just so you know I'm there. So go on; ask me whatever your little heart wants to know."

Her little heart sped up but she didn't back down. Now she looked into those black eyes, shiny like a shark's, with some kind of excitement in her veins. She nodded.

"Is your father responsible for your scars?"

After a moment of quiet introspection, he slapped her. She gasped and put her beer down, seeing that he wasn't joking.

"Yes," he said. "Now me. Why did you kidnap that kid?"

"I wanted him to love me. Do I get to slap you?"

"Wow," he said honestly. "That is…_wow_. You wanted him to love you. And you are _welcome_ to _try_, Angel. Was that your next question?"

"Was that yours?"

"Let's stop that misunderstanding right now. Ask me a real question."

"Why did your father cut you?"

"I didn't say he did." He saw her flinch, waiting for another blow. "I didn't mind that one."

"How was he…responsible?"

"For taking two in a row, you get this," he said, backhanding her lightly. "I'm _not _going to answer that one."

"If you're just going to keep slapping me, I might not want to-"

"You're right," he agreed. He pulled his chair closer to hers and took her wrist in his hand, producing a knife from one of the pockets she'd included in his jacket lining. She'd been pretty naïve, he thought, and almost smiled. Poising the blade over her palm, he nodded to her to continue. "Go ahead. I'm still thinking about my turn."

She took a breath. The knife changed things a little.

"I'm not going to _kill _you," he said, amused.

"But you can survive a lot," she countered.

"So you're afraid of survival?"

"You forfeit your _real_ question. No, survival doesn't scare me. What scares you?"

Joker made a show of thinking about it, eyes rolling around in that skull of his. Before he said anything, he jabbed the knife tip into her wrist; just enough to sting and draw a bead of blood. She yelped and tried to pull away; he didn't let her.

"Beige," he said. She thought he might be joking, but he looked serious. "It's boring."

"You're afraid of boredom." Angie mulled that for a minute. "That's good. Makes sense."

"My turn. What's the deal with Jon Crane?"

"He was my psychiatrist in Arkham. My turn-"

"_Not…yet._" The blade pressed into her skin, half an inch from the first little stab; he laid it flat this time. An indication of a deeper slice, she supposed. She quieted. "Hmm," Joker said thoughtfully. "For a doctor, he's, ah…let me put it this way. How did he make you forget about that…" he waved the knife around airily for a moment, "Cameron? That Cameron fella. And all that he _did_ to you."

Her silence didn't please him, but he could see that she probably didn't know the answer herself. Interesting. "You can't cut me for answers," she said. He noted that it was not a question. Clever. He nodded.

"I don't know," she said. "Wait, how did you know about that?"

He made a move to cut her, but thought better of it. "I read your, ah…your, y'know. Medical file. It has all the little-juicy-details. As long as those _details_ have nothing to do with Crane."

"Most of my details have something to do with him." She looked back at the floor.

He ducked to try to meet her gaze. "Then, ah…what am _I_ missing out on? If he was more than just your, your _head-shrink_, what was he? Was he your…" the Joker couldn't stifle a giggle here, and it was the sort of thing that made him truly sound mad. He put a stop to it when she met his eyes again, but couldn't wipe that grin off his face. "…your boyfriend?" he finished. Suddenly he sat up, approximating seriousness. "Did he fuck ya?"

Angie tensed more than even she thought reasonable, considering the source; she twitched and couldn't stop herself from slapping him with her free hand. For a split second she assumed she'd just signed her death warrant, but the Joker couldn't have been more delighted, it seemed. He cackled, manic, finally calming himself to a flurry of girlish giggles. "Shall I take that as a 'yes'?"

"No," Angie answered. She opened her mouth to ask her next question – a humdinger, but why fake pleasantries now – and the Joker ignored the attempt.

"Did you want him to?"

"No." There was a bare second's hesitation; Angie wished she could have been stronger. This game was quickly becoming unpleasant. The Joker smiled that wide smile as he tapped his blade against her bottom lip.

"I…think…you did."

"Do you?" she dared.

"Want him to fuck you? Why, what an odd…oh, I _see_!" Joker licked his lips for the first time in a while, she noticed. He tended to do that when things were really going his way; she'd seen it at his first fitting, when everything had miraculously suited him just right, and assumed it was a nervous tick. Because no normal person would lick their scars. "Do you…want me to?"

_This won't test him, _she thought. "What if I do?"

He pricked her skin with that knife tip again, and this time she held her tongue. Another round drop of blood rose, almost perfectly matching the first.

"Then I guess you'd be…_damaged._"

Angie shivered at the turn in his voice; it was shimmering now, black as tar. The sound of his father, she hypothesized. She'd awakened the monster – the deepening voice, the stretched words. The cruelty, the pure, unfettered cruelty. She'd certainly missed her mark.

She tried to yank her hand out of his grasp, but he held on tight, the violet leather digging dents into her skin. The gloves were perfect, that finishing touch that had sealed her into his favour; they fit perfectly, and everyone knew how bloody difficult it was to make gloves. Her dedication had impressed him, no doubt, and he couldn't have written it off as fear. She'd had no idea who he was, at the time.

"I'm done now," she said quietly. "Let me go."

"Ah-ah," he answered. "I'm _not_. You know what your problem is? Do ya, hmm?" He nodded as if she'd answered him herself. He drifted closer to her, face to face, as she tried to pull away. "Yeah, I'll tell ya. You love men who wear _masks._ You think that ugliness is covering something valuable, maybe, or maybe you just want someone who hides their broken doll-parts just as well as you do. I don't know, yet. The problem here is that you're wrong about me."

Angie stopped her escape attempts for the moment. "How so?" she asked. She was aware that he was winning; she was trying to keep up, despite the stakes.

Now his grip tightened even further, impossibly, and she thought her delicate bones might burst. The Joker didn't look strong, really, but…that gruesome façade hid some real power. He wrenched her hand upward, twisting her palm to rest against his face, those scars, that greasepaint. His skin felt both marvelously cool and unsettlingly infectious.

"This is _me_," he said. It was pure menace. "Not my mask. This is what I look like, what I really, really am inside. All this ugliness…" he smiled bitterly, leaned his cheek into her hand like a mock lover. That smile changed when she stopped trying to pull back and let herself caress the scar tissue. He faltered, for a second, and the grin recovered with a bit less danger than before.

"This ugliness…" Again he stopped. This time he sighed, black eyes slipping closed for just one exhausted second. She'd never noticed how tired he was before.

"This ugliness, what?" she prompted. The Joker opened his eyes.

"This ugliness is me."

For a moment as bright and brief and terrifying as a lightning strike, Angie saw how beautiful he really was. She stared even after the jolt wore off and the uneasiness he conjured set back in; he stared back, face held in her hand, and she didn't try to get away. For the first time all night, he didn't try to push her.


End file.
